Vanity Fair

02/26/2025

“Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access,” the New York Times’ Peter Baker wrote Tuesday. “Given that the White House has already kicked one news organization out of the pool because of coverage it did not like, it is making certain everyone else knows that the rest of us can be barred too if the president does not like our questions or stories.”

“Give me a break, Peter,” Leavitt replied.

“Guess he won’t be a pooler anytime soon,” Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller and adviser to Elon Musk, chimed in.

The taunts are part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to bully the press: It had already restricted the Associated Press’s Oval Office access over the outlet’s refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” as the president demands. Then, on Wednesday, it kicked Reuters and HuffPost out of the pool, while adding right-wing, pro-Trump outlets Newsmax and the Blaze to the rotation. “This move does not give the power back to the people,” Fox News’ White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich wrote Tuesday, rejecting Leavitt’s Orwellian framing. “It gives power to the White House.”