The Trump administration on Tuesday stripped the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) of the power to determine which outlets can participate in the White House press pool. The association's leader, Eugene Daniels, Politico correspondent and soon-to-be MSNBC host, is known as a "Kamala Harris expert" who once asked the former vice president whether Donald Trump and J.D. Vance's campaign rhetoric stemmed from "irredeemable racism."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the WHCA "should no longer have a monopoly" on which outlets can include a reporter in the 13-member White House press pool, which is allowed into the Oval Office, on Air Force One, and at any event that cannot accommodate the entire White House press corps, Politico reported Tuesday.
"All journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table," Leavitt said. Going forward, the White House will include additional outlets as part of the press pool, without consulting the WHCA.
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer described the change as "amazing news," saying it will allow "new voices" from "media outlets from outside of the DC Beltway bubble." Spicer said that WHCA members angry over the change should "direct blame" toward Daniels, who repeatedly expressed sympathies with Harris while covering her failed 2024 campaign.
Daniels, whom the liberal Poynter Institute described as "the Kamala Harris expert," gave favorable coverage to Harris throughout the campaign. In one Mediaite interview in July, he said that "the excitement" for Harris is "insane" and insisted that Harris, whom former president Joe Biden tasked with leading the administration's efforts on "stemming the migration to our southern border," was not Biden's border czar.
Two months later, Daniels, who had told the Poynter Institute that he was "tough" on Harris, interviewed the then-vice president during a National Association of Black Journalists panel, asking her whether Trump and Vance's comments on Haitian migrants in Ohio were "a case of irredeemable racism that can't be mitigated by any rational action."
Daniels said in a statement Tuesday that the administration's decision to include more outlets in the pool "tears at the independence of a free press."
Daniels is reportedly expected to leave Politico and cohost a weekend show on MSNBC, according to Puck News.
As president of the WHCA, Daniels picked comedian Amber Ruffin to host the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, praising her as the "perfect fit for the dinner this year." Ruffin has long expressed her dislike for the president, from mocking him in 2020 to saying that "no one wants" Trump to attend this year's dinner.
This month, Ruffin told CNN that she disagrees with former hosts who told her that "you have to make fun of everybody," rather than just "the people you disagree with."
"I am not going to do that," she said. "Maybe I'll do it a little bit, but probably not."
Trump did not attend the correspondents' dinners during his first term.