Seating Chart for the New Briefing Room

Trump forbade The Associated Press, which has been a mainstay of White House coverage for over a century, from attending press conferences and other events in February. Leavitt then claimed that the White House would select the reporters from the “press pool” who accompany the president on his trips and at his small-scale events, depriving the association of its long-standing responsibility for pool organization.

The White House has invited relatively low-rated TV networks and hyperpartisan pro-Trump websites to join the fray in recent weeks. When an employee of the far-right channel One America News disguised a compliment as a question on Friday, Trump exclaimed, “I love this guy.”

At her press briefings, Leavitt has also pushed right-wing podcasters and nonconformist authors by transforming a White House aide’s seat into a “new media seat.”

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