Sawt Falasteen - Pressing matters: White House shake-up boosts pro-Trump media

But it was also the moment that defined a new media landscape under the Republican president that has given increased prominence to right-wing outlets.

From the White House to Air Force One, the traditional "pool" of reporters who follow the US president has had its biggest shake-up in decades with the addition of members of an often raucous, partisan new media.

Trump's administration is giving unprecedented access to podcasters and influencers, many of them openly supportive of his MAGA movement. At the same time, it is bitterly attacking -- and in one case barring -- the legacy media.

It comes after former reality TV show host Trump embraced podcasters on his way to an extraordinary White House comeback in the 2024 election.

"I'm not hiding. I voted for Trump. I think he's doing a good job," said Clay Travis, founder of sports culture website Outkick, who was part of the pool on Trump's trip to watch a wrestling match in Philadelphia last weekend.

Travis, who is also the host of a conservative radio show and podcast The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show, got a rare one-on-one interview with Trump on the presidential plane.

He told AFP: "People can say, OK, I don't want to trust that guy because I know that he likes Trump and thinks he's doing a good job. Or they can say, I do trust that guy more because he's being honest and telling us what his perspective is."

Travis is emblematic of the change signaled by Karoline Leavitt, who at 27 was the youngest press secretary in history at her very first briefing back in January.

Pledging to follow her boss's "revolutionary media approach," Leavitt unveiled a "new media seat" in the famed briefing room and threw open the press accreditation system to all comers.

The White House told AFP it had received a staggering 92,000 applications so far.

The seat has been occupied by a wide variety of people, including a journalist from pro-Trump "My Pillow" businessman Mike Lindell's TV channel.

Less than a month later Leavitt dropped the bombshell that the White House -- and not an independent association of journalists -- would choose which reporters are part of the pool and add some new organizations to the rotation.

- 'Enemy of the people' -

Many of those have been right-wing or fringe news outlets, meaning that more mainstream organizations -- including Reuters, Bloomberg and AFP -- have seen their access to the president decrease.

And while Trump's White House is packing the press corps with friendly media, it is engaging in open hostility with those that it dislikes.

Trump banned the US newswire the Associated Press from almost all presidential events after it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by the new name he has decreed, the "Gulf of America."

The president has also stepped up his targeting of individual journalists.

He branded The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief a "sleazebag" this week after the journalist revealed he was accidentally included in a chat group of US officials about air strikes on Yemen.

He called the New York Times the "enemy of the people" and said outlets including CNN, MSNBC and unidentified newspapers writing critically about him were "illegal."

On social media, he has lashed out by name at a string of well-known reporters -- often women. He has even targeted one from Fox News, which is popular with conservative viewers.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the changes was the man behind the Zelensky suit question -- Brian Glenn, chief White House correspondent for Real America's Voice, a right-wing cable news channel.

Glenn, who also happens to be the boyfriend of the firebrand, ultra-Trumpist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, is not officially in the pool but gets access to many of Trump's appearances.

"I said you were right!" Glenn exclaimed as Trump threw him a red baseball cap marked "Trump was right about everything" during one Oval Office event.

He was the only journalist to take one.

T.Samara--SF-PST