The Current White House Press Room Seating Chart and Why It Has to Go

Since 2022, when the White House threw up its hands and ceded control to what is, in essence, government property—the James Brady White House Press Briefing Room—it’s been the White House Correspondence Association (WHCA) that determines who gets press credentials to the daily press briefing and where they get to sit. Given the pronounced left-leaning bias of the WHCA, this is wrong, and the practice must stop on Day One of the incoming Trump Administration.

This is a call to Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s outspoken incoming press secretary (historically, the youngest press secretary in U.S. history), to end the practice once and for all. She must distribute press credentials more fairly.

Let’s look at the current seating chart for the briefing room.

And many are angry and frustrated that their slanted coverage of Trump and Republicans was not enough to tilt the results of the 2024 Presidential Election. Many believe that their biased coverage was partly responsible for Trump’s landslide victory and Kamala Harris’ epic defeat.

They’re correct. It is now clear that reporting on the Biden White House over the past four years has been an exercise in gaslighting by the left-wing media. What was once a sneaking suspicion that the media were not completely upfront about Biden’s mental state has since been revealed to be the media’s complicity to brazenly lie about the president’s infirmity that the entire population could plainly see. Instead of reporting on a clearly failing chief executive, these legacy media outlets acted as pretorian guards, denying the reality of Biden’s decline at every turn.

Let’s look at some of the most obvious offenders, starting with NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, the president of the WHCA. NBC, whose most public face is NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, pretends to play things down the middle, but everyone with two eyes and two ears knows that’s not the case. And the second most visible member of NBC News is Meet the Press’ Kirsten Welker. Watching either’s coverage of Donald Trump over the last nine years, as well as any other member of NBC News and its mouthpiece for the Democrat National Committee (DNC), will show exactly where they stand on the political spectrum; both Holt and Welker lean way left.

Then there’s ABC News’ Mary Bruce, its Chief White House/National Correspondent. One only has to watch ABC News’ 2024 Election Night coverage as she continued to gaslight her audience—working hand-in-glove with primary anchor David Muir—right up until the point that Trump had garnered 267 Electoral College votes and was on the cusp of being the projected winner.

It was embarrassing and humiliating. We searched but could not find one single report from Bruce until Biden’s dreadful June 27, 2024, debate performance that didn’t extol the virtues of Joe Biden or repeat the administration’s talking points and his failed presidency. Not once did she or anyone at ABC News even hint at Biden’s cognitive decline.

It’s the same with CBS, one negative story after another, going back to the first Trump administration. Over the past week, CBS News finally acknowledged that they were complicit in the Biden coverup when one of its own correspondents, chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford, called out her colleagues last Sunday on Face the Nation. This is an extreme yet not isolated example of CBS News gaslighting (the actual term Crawford used, not us) its own viewers. But the rot at CBS News starts at the very top, starting with its hyper-biased Election Night coverage orchestrated rather than presented by its own pair of Democrat/DNC activists, Nora O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan.

It’s no better at CNN. It has a long legacy of false reporting on Trump, especially about reporting on RussiaGate going back to the first Trump administration. And who can forget when the microphone had to be pulled from correspondent Jim Acosta as Trump called out, “You are fake news.” Of course, its current “it girl,” Kaitlan Collins, is no better than any of the pathetic dinosaurs at CNN; Democrat apologists like Dana Bash, Jake Tapper, or Wolf Blitzer, who occupy anchor seats at the Clinton News Network. This clip of right-wing hero Scott Jennings handing long-time DNC activist Karen Finney her ass after she made her own mea culpa. She tried to claim that she had no idea that Biden was in obvious cognitive decline from Day One of his now-failed presidency. If she really didn’t realize what was obvious, should she be allowed to contribute to any opinion panel? Her words were just as meaningless now on CNN as they were previously on MSNBC.

And speaking of MSNBC, there simply isn’t enough space in a single column to catalog and document the examples of their journalistic malfeasance. It starts at the top with Rachel “RussiaGate” Maddow, then Joe Scarborough, and the rest of the Democrat operatives and RINOs like Nicole Wallace, who sit behind the anchor desks at MSDNC, we mean MSNBC (soon to be off-loaded by corporate owner Comcast as it rids itself of this ongoing embarrassment to journalism, “tarnishing” the vaunted NBC News brand).

Ms. Leavitt, things need to change starting on Trump’s first day in office. Start by shaking up the press room seating chart. No clearer signal can be sent to the dying legacy mainstream outlets than to seat Cameroonian journalist Simon Ateba in one of the first two preferred rows, sending to the back of the room the representative of National Public Radio who has shilled and continues to shill for Biden, the DNC, and Democrats across the electoral spectrum.

Simon Ateba, whose well-publicized spat two years ago with current White House Press Secretary and Senior Presidential Advisor Karrine Jean-Pierre, made him a cause célèbre among critics of the current process. He deserves to move up to the front of the room. That would send a clear message to the hacks in the legacy media that there is a new sheriff in town… you!

It should be noted that over the four years of the Biden administration, it has curtailed or revoked the credentials of more than 400 journalists, mostly from independent outlets. Replace more of these coveted seats held by biased legacy media Democrat apologists with independent journalists, especially from YouTube and other streaming platforms. They reach millions of news junkies who no longer trust any legacy media source. Let the next seating chart reflect this new media and news landscape.

By doing so, we can begin the arduous process of rebuilding trust in the legacy media—if it can be saved at all. If not, we can acknowledge the legitimacy of alternative media and citizen journalism, the presence of which proves that nature (and the news-hungry public) abhors a vacuum.

The answer to this is for Ms. Leavitt to apportion the seats in the press room so that conservative, independent, and liberal outlets are proportionally represented to the electorate and are given the opportunity to ask questions that all Americans want answers to, not the biased seating chart as it now exists. It shouldn’t be just the alphabet networks, the mainstream cable news networks, and the failing legacy newspaper outlets whose reach and influence diminish with each passing day and are sent to the back of the room.

YouTubers and streaming-only outlets have now earned and deserve their place in the Brady Briefing Room. Kick out a few of the dinosaurs and give their coveted spots to representatives of the new-generation news media. Have correspondents from new media outlets like Patrick Bet-David, Megyn Kelly, Tim Pool, and even a smaller podcaster like Alison Morrow (a traditional TV reporter from a local network affiliate in the Pacific Northwest who has made the transition to her own streaming platform) in the room to ask questions. And we don’t mean from the back of the room.

Have one or two of these new media journalists sitting in the front row next to those so-called journalists from the legacy media who have continually disgraced themselves, especially over the last nine years. Their time has clearly come and gone.

It’s time for some fresh blood. And we mean you, Jim Vanderhei. You and Axios should now get that seat at the back of the room you have richly earned. No one outside the DC beltway, the media centered in New York and in Hollywood, is following you anymore. This is a reward for the bias you have shown over the last two administrations against Trump and Republicans. Your complicity in concealing Biden’s obvious cognitive decline over the last four years is now laid bare. No amount of vilifying young, hard-working, hungry new-media citizen journalists can alter that fact no matter how many times you appear on Morning Joe.

Ms. Leavitt, it’s time that these pathetic, partisan Democrat activists masquerading as journalists are treated the way they should be treated, with contempt. Their era of gaslighting Americans is now officially over, starting on January 20, 2025.

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Richard Truesdell is a former consumer electronics retail executive and automotive travel photojournalist. In the last 25 years, he has visited more than 35 countries on six continents. A former high school history teacher with a BA in Political Science from Waynesburg University, he is a lifelong Conservative moderate who has turned his thoughts and keyboard to political commentary and popular culture. A cross-section of his writings can be found here.

Keith Lehmann is a retired consumer electronics industry executive who has written extensively on technology, transportation, and international travel. Living in Southern California for over fifty years, he has first-hand exposure to societal and cultural happenings of the left and submits decidedly realism-based, Conservative viewpoints, much of which can be found on his Substack.