On Wednesday, during his first Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic directing Fox News’ Lawrence Jones how to cover the meeting as journalists filed out of the room.
TRUMP: Lawrence. Look at Lawrence. This guy’s making a fortune. He never had it so good. He never had it so good.
[Jones crosses in front of the camera, giving Trump a thumbs-up sign.]
TRUMP: Lawrence, say we did a great job, please. Okay? Say it was unbelievable.
The exchange was caught by the Associated Press’ feed. The AP has been a target of the White House’s early attempts at censorship, initially denying the news outlet access after it chose not to rename the Gulf of Mexico based on Trump’s whims.
Trump’s directive to Jones came on the same day that HuffPost was removed from the White House press pool, breaking the longstanding practice of press access without authoritarian interference.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists that the White House will decide which outlets get access to the Oval Office and Air Force One from now on.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt departs the press briefing room at the White House on Feb. 25, 2025.
“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” the White House Correspondents Association said in a statement. “It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”
The AP, Bloomberg News, and Reuters released a joint statement calling Leavitt’s announcement a threat to democracy.
“We believe that any steps by the government to limit the number of wire services with access to the President threatens that principle. It also harms the spread of reliable information to people, communities, businesses and global financial markets that heavily depend on our reporting,” said the statement.
Trump may be right that Jones has “never had it so good.” During last year’s presidential campaign, Jones accompanied Trump on a “surprise” visit to a barbershop in the Bronx, in an attempt to make Trump seem less racist and elitist. Fox News was later found to have edited much of Trump’s incoherence and many of his lies out of the aired segment.
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