White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed reports on Monday that the Trump administration was "seriously considering" taking control of the seating arrangements in the White House press room, leaving the White House Correspondents' Association, which traditionally controls seating, left in the lurch.
"We've made a lot of changes across the board that have benefited the American public to how this White House is covered," Leavitt told Fox News on Monday. "We believe that it's fundamentally unfair that a group of D.C.-based elitists get to choose who gets to cover the president of the United States."
Over the weekend, Axios reported that the Trump administration was organizing its own seating chart for reporters. Leavitt confirmed Monday, according to The Hill, that the White House was "seriously considering" the changes but noted that attempts were being made to "broker" a meeting with WHCA leadership.
However, the WHCA sent a letter Monday that drew the ire of the West Wing. In the letter, the WHCA officials wrote that "the White House should abandon this wrong-headed effort and show the American people they're not afraid to explain their policies and field questions from an independent media free from government control."
Leavitt responded to the letter on Fox News, stating, "Unfortunately, [the WHCA's] president [Politico's Eugene Daniels] sent out a fundamentally unserious email making it clear that this is a group that doesn't care about press freedom, transparency and access for all media voices but just cares about having their monetized monopoly over the briefing room."
Notably, The Associated Press has been banned from the press pool for its refusal to reference Gulf of America.
Leavitt commented that, "the media has changed a lot in the decades of press coverage here at The White House. It's time that coverage changes with it."