WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday refused to let a group of journalists travel with him to cover his historic first meeting with President Barack Obama, breaking a long-standing practice intended to ensure the public has a watchful eye on the nation’s leader.
Trump flew from New York to Washington on his private jet without that “pool” of reporters, photographers and television cameras that have traveled with presidents and presidents-elect.
Trump’s flouting of press access was one of his first public decisions since his election Tuesday.
Trump’s meeting with Obama on Thursday will be recorded by the pool of White House reporters, photographers and TV cameras who cover the president.
News organizations had for weeks tried to coordinate a pool of journalists who could begin to travel with Trump immediately after Election Day if he won election. But his campaign did not cooperate with those requests and his senior advisers refused Wednesday, the day after the election, to discuss any such press arrangements.
Trump also broke from tradition as a candidate, refusing to allow a pool of campaign reporters, photographers or cameras to fly on his plane as he traveled to events.
Every president in recent memory has traveled with a pool of journalists when they leave the White House grounds. A pool of reporters and photographers were in the motorcade when President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas.
The pool was just steps away from President Ronald Reagan when he was shot outside a hotel in the District of Columbia, and was stationed outside his hospital room as he recovered. The pool also travels on vacation and foreign trips and at times captures personal, historic moments of the presidency.
News organizations take turns serving in the small group, paying their way and sharing the material collected in the pool with the larger press corps. The pool also covers official events at the White House when space doesn’t allow for the full press corps.
The Associated Press is among those reaching out to Trump advisers about press access.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
DJT Didn’t want to be seen taking instruction from and being cordial to PBO.
DJT is going to hate being president. For one thing, he’s used to much bigger houses.
He doesn’t want the people knowing how little knowledge he has on any issue.
I predict he will quit after about a year. He will be bored to tears and will hate the constraints. Melania will live at his hotel and wave from the window before she flies back to NYC.
You joke (maybe?) but over the last 24 hours I’ve kind of been coming around to this idea, or something like it. It seems clear, in a sort of “water is wet” way, that Donald Trump is the most work- and responsibility-averse person to run for President at least in my lifetime (back to Nixon) and maybe ever. He was always and only in this to push the Trump Brand, and to feed his narcissism. George W. Bush was ignorant, incurious, and lazy, but DJT makes GWB look like fucking Plato, Einstein, and Ghandi rolled together.
And who else had that combination of self-love, almost complete ignorance, a talent for the con job, and a tenuous grasp of English? Yeah, Caribou Barbie, the former half-term governor of Alaska.
Trump already said during the campaign that any work he didn’t feel like doing he was going to fob off on Pence. If he doesn’t outright resign, I think he’s going to do everything in his power to be a figurehead. Fly around in Air Force One, go to dinners and give speeches about how he’s making America Hate Again, bigly, and have so many affairs while in office that Bill Clinton is viewed as an example of what respecting the Oval Office means.
And if I’m right, I think it’s a Good Thing. Pence is a fucking nutjob as are all of the likely candidates for cabinet positions, but - compared to Trump - they may be just barely competent enough to keep us from nuclear war. And that, for me, is where the bar is set for the next four years: No Nuclear War.
Climate - ruined. Economy - tanked. Foreign Relations - ruined. Wars - many. Civil Rights - evaporated (except for gun rights of course). Free Press - jailed. Healthcare - only for the rich. All of this I expect. Just don’t start a nuclear war. We’ll survive and rebuild in 2020.
No, I am actually not joking. Trump is all about Trump. If being President keeps him from being Trump and everywhere he goes people jeer at him, he will quit. And, I think more people will be jeering him as time goes on. They have no idea what they have done.