White House Press Secretary Says Outlets Will Face Retribution If ‘Lies’ Are Told About Trump

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Wednesday that retribution could come for news outlets who tell “lies” about President Trump and his administration — as the administration has already done by blocking the Associated Press twice from entering the Oval Office after it declined to change in its stylebook the name of the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America.”Ms. Leavitt, as the youngest press secretary in history, is already trying to remake the briefing room by adding a “new media seat” for podcasters and non-traditional news outlets who otherwise would not get credentials to access the White House. Her comments Wednesday are igniting new concerns among members of the press corps, especially after the Defense Department began removing outlets from their workspaces at the Pentagon and replacing them with more editorially friendly ones. “If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable, and it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is,” Ms. Leavitt said when asked why the White House made the decision to deny the AP access to the Oval Office for an event on Tuesday. “The Secretary of Interior has made that the official designation in the geographical identification name server, and Apple has recognized that, Google has recognized that. Pretty much every other outlet in this room has recognized that body of water as the Gulf of America, and it’s very important to this administration that we get that right, not just for people here at home, but also for the rest of the world.”Ms. Leavitt defended the White House’s decision to keep the AP out of the Oval Office, saying that reporters do not have an inherent right to ask questions of the president. “It is a privilege to cover this white House,” Ms. Leavitt said Wednesday. “Nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That is an invitation that is given.”The White House did not announce its decision preemptively to bar the AP from its duties on the press pool on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it again barred the AP from participating in a pool event to cover the swearing in of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. “Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing,” the AP’s executive editor, Julie Pace, said in a statement Tuesday. The AP has changed its stylebook to reflect Mr. Trump’s renaming of Denali to Mount McKinley because “the area lies solely in the United States and as president, Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.” On the Gulf of Mexico, however, the AP says that it will not change the name because of one president’s order while the international community does not recognize that new name. They say that they will refer to it as the Gulf of Mexico, while noting that officially it is known as the Gulf of America within the United States government. Mr. Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf “only carries authority within the United States,” the AP writes in their style guidance. “Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change,” it added. “The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.”

White House Press Secretary Says Outlets Will Face Retribution If ‘Lies’ Are Told About Trump

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