WASHINGTON White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt touted the control she has of the briefing room and defended a recent crackdown on reporter access in an interview on “Pod Force One” out Wednesday. “I try, thank you,” Leavitt replied when “Pod Force One” host Miranda Devine gushed that she ruled the White House press briefing room with “an iron fist.” “I prepare a lot for the briefings, and I walk in there with a good grip on what they’re going to ask, because I read and I watch and I prepare all day, all morning,” Leavitt, 28, explained. Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary in US history, acknowledged that sometimes the briefing room can get heated, but stressed that she wants her team to be “professional” with reporters. “The press briefing room can be combative, and sometimes it is behind the scenes as well, but I tell our team that we need to be professional and get them facts, and nobody does that better than President Trump,” she said. “We will also work with good journalists who want to write good stories and try to make those stories as accurate as possible.” At times, Leavitt and others in the White House communications shop have been known to give snarky replies to lefty reporters who have a knack for getting on their nerves. Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington on ‘Pod Force One.’ Subscribe here! Last month, for example, Leavitt replied, “Your mom did,” in response to a HuffPost reporter’s question about who selected Budapest as the summit location for President Trump and Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin. That meeting was later scrapped. During Leavitt’s tenure, the White House has cracked down on the press, taking control of the pool reporter rotation from the White House Correspondents’ Association. Pool reporters are journalists who get closer access to the president than the rest of the press corps, with the task of sending them notes and other information. Journalists are given access to the White House pool on a rotating basis. Late last month, the Trump administration also restricted reporters from freely wandering to the Upper Press area, where Leavitt and other White House communications officials work. It’s above the Lower Press area, where the press briefing room is located. Under the new rules, reporters have to make appointments to get into the Upper Press. “What was happening up here is now that we have taken over the responsibilities of the National Security Council, thanks to the restructuring of Secretary Rubio when he became national security advisor,” Leavitt explained. “So we felt it became very inappropriate for reporters to be loitering around sensitive information in our offices. And we did, unfortunately, catch some unruly reporters recording us without our permission, listening in on our conversations, eavesdropping.” Leavitt claimed that, privately, many reporters are OK with the new system as long as they still have access to appointments. “We grant them that access,” she said. “I give them as much time as I possibly can on my schedule, although a lot of my time is with the president and in the Oval Office and sitting in on meetings.” One step the Trump administration has taken to expand access for reporters is its creation of a new media seat in the press briefing room for independent media. The White House press team also added a dedicated new media spot in the pool rotation. In reflecting on the differences between the first and second Trump administrations, Leavitt concluded that the media treats the president with more respect. “I think that November 5th was a huge wake-up call for so many reporters in the mainstream media class. If you notice, their interactions with the president and with myself are far different than they were in his first term with my predecessors,” she said. “I think they realized that maybe there’s something to this guy. If 70 million Americans elected him, not once, but twice, maybe we should have a little bit more respect and treat this administration with a little more decency.”.
https://nypost.com/2025/11/19/us-news/karoline-leavitt-reveals-how-she-rules-wh-briefing-room-with-an-iron-fist-on-pod-force-one/
Karoline Leavitt reveals how she rules WH briefing room with an ‘iron fist’ on ‘Pod Force One’
