Latest hot rumor: Trump to boot the press corps from the White House

I suppose the networks needed something to keep themselves busy until the inauguration. The latest suggestion (which is all it is at this point, and not coming from Trump himself) is that the President Elect is considering giving the press corps the boot and kicking them out of the White House. This snippet from Rebecca Savransky at The Hill.

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President-elect Donald Trump’s team is reportedly considering evicting the press corps from the White House.

Instead, the press corps may work out of the White House Conference Center, near Lafayette Square, or in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, Esquire reported.

“There has been no decision,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, adding “there has been some discussion about how to do it.”

It sounds like this is a logistical question intended to tackle the problem of getting more press on site rather than sending them to Gitmo, but I suppose a headline with “evicting the press from the White House” draws more eyeballs. But then again, who knows? Trump has certainly been more annoyed with the press than any president in recent memory so perhaps that’s just a cover story? Just for the record, Reince was out doing the Sunday shows as well and would only say that it hasn’t been determined yet. Inside my head that means that Trump probably was spitballing some ideas when it came up but none of them know his final determination yet. For all we know he was venting about something and the whole idea doesn’t wind up going anywhere.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned for sure from both the campaign and the transition thus far and you can take it to the bank. Anything you hear coming from a member of the team, an anonymous aide or “source close to the President Elect” or even Mike Pence isn’t written in stone. We’ve seen politicians keep their cards close to the vest before, but Trump has the entire deck in his inner jacket pocket. You can believe that something is an official position when you see it on Trump’s Twitter feed or when he stops by a microphone to toss out a few comments. And even then it might have an expiration date because Trump thinks on his feet and will take new information into account as he gets it. He also has a decided tendency to play up a dramatic position just to get everyone’s tongues wagging but he may back off a bit later on if he deems it appropriate.

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But just for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s true. What then? Our Redstate colleague Susan Wright is perhaps one of the more vehement Trump critics you’re likely to meet and she clucks her tongue a bit at how events arrived at this possible impasse. But even so, she notes that it’s not as if the press wasn’t asking for it to a certain degree.

It is likely a self-inflicted wound by the press. Years of biased, left-leaning coverage by most of the major news networks, along with an air of arrogance that led them to believe they were doing us a favor by not just giving us the news, but telling us which side of the issues we should be standing on, has created a groundswell of rebellion in large swaths of the public.

It’s going to be four years of President Donald Trump doing his best to keep the press jumping through hoops and taking his case directly to the voters via social media and rallies every time he feels he’s not being covered fairly or accurately. Thus far the media hasn’t shown any indication whatsoever that they know what to do about it, but most of them definitely don’t like having the role of “narrative filter” taken away. And if they get sent to a different building rather than hanging around the White House itself? I’m sure they’ll figure out something.

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