PRESIDENT TRUMP CONTINUES TO GO AGAINST HIS WHITE HOUSE RULES

…The president and his small number of allowed White House correspondents

Trump again shows that he is above the law, and his own rules

Did you know that besides all the things that President Trump is doing that is illegal or disgusting, he is also going against the rules of his own White House Correspondence Association (WHCA).  This is the president's association that makes the rules for the reporters that are allowed in the White House briefing room.

With the social distancing rules for the Covid-19 spaces, there are now strict limits on the number of reporters who can attend each briefing.  The number of correspondents that are allowed into the room is now a rotating 14.  That allows the appropriate distance from each other in the very small WH room.

Well, for the president that doesn’t care about any rules, he has allowed the two organizations that are known for their conspiratorial bents on the news and they have a long record of editorial support for President Trump.  So, of course, Trump broke all the rules and not only allowed both of them to “cut in line” of the normal press rotation, he then also allowed them both to ask questions during the news conference.

These two, small, mostly less-than-respected publications, the Gateway Pundit and the Epoch Times, two right-wing conspiracy outlets were pushed to the front of the line for last week’s press conference.

Under normal circumstances, this might not amount to much, given the dozens of reporters who usually pack into the briefing room.  But since starting in March, the pandemic has prompted these strict limits on the number of reporters who can attend each briefing.

Gateway Pundit and Epoch Times both were allowed to jump the line with the president’s blessing. They had joined the conservative cable network One America News (OAN), whose correspondents were initially barred by the WHCA, but Trump had granted them an exemption since last April.

In effect, the White House appears to have violated their own agreement for bringing in any representatives or organizations seen as overly sympathetic to the president.

Correspondents from all three organizations stood at the back of the small briefing room. They appeared to have masks, required by White House rules, however, each dropped them in order for them to shout questions.

Their presence drew a furious reaction from the WHCA’s president, Zeke Miller, who said in an email, “It is outrageous that the White House continues to invite ‘guests’ to press briefings, putting the health and safety of everyone in the workspace at greater risk. The WHCA’s social-distancing guidelines were crafted in consultation with the White House based on the recommendations of the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the nation’s leading health professionals. Trampling on those guidelines endangers the critical work of reporters who have maintained independent press coverage of the presidency throughout the pandemic.”

As expected, the White House representatives, including the press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, did not respond to a request for comment.

All three outlets make no pretense of their support for President Trump.  But what is disturbing is that all three have pushed conspiratorial and totally false stories and major hoaxes that totally favor the president.

During the 2016 campaign, the Gateway Pundit, was then, only an opinion and commentary blog.  They had published rumors about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s health and totally false claims about voter fraud. They have also promoted conspiracy theories about the nation’s perpetrators of mass shootings.  Its founder, Jim Hoft, has said the blog’s mission is to, “expose the wickedness of the far left.”

Small groups of Trump supporters have distanced themselves from Gateway Pundit.  Organizers of a panel discussion staged in conjunction with the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2018 sought to exclude Jim Hoft.  This was after Gateway Pundit reported, without any evidence, that students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had falsely been coached to criticize Trump’s response to the mass shooting at the Florida school.

“The Epoch Times was present in the briefing room by the invitation of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany,” said Dana Cheng, an Epoch Times spokeswoman. Gateway Pundit did not respond to a request for their comment.

Epoch Times reporter Emel Akan had asked President Trump a question during the briefing, and Alicia Powe, a reporter for Gateway Pundit, was also allowed at the briefing.

Trump has indulged in conspiracy mongering of his own in recent days, falsely suggesting that the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), might not be eligible to run.  This is a repeat of the “birtherism” lie he deployed for years against President Barack Obama.  Trump declined as to whether he agreed with the views of a Republican candidate for the House, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has embraced the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory.

One America New’s primary White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, is regularly called on by Trump and Press Secretary, McEnany during White House briefings. The president has frequently praised this conservative cable network, finding it preferable to the much larger Fox News.

At the latest briefing, Trump again called on Rion, who immediately deferred to Emel Akan of the Epoch Times. Akan asked how the United States would respond to the Chinese government’s arrest of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media mogul, in an apparent crackdown on press freedom. Trump called it “a terrible thing” and then pivoted to a discussion of Hong Kong’s economy, saying the withdrawal of unspecified US “incentives” would make it “very hard for Hong Kong to compete.”  He never explained what the "incentives" were.

He then ended the briefing.

At Friday’s news conference, Trump called on Gateway Pundit’s representative, Alicia Powe, who asked Trump about his reaction to former vice president Biden taking “credit” for the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday. (Biden had only hailed the agreement as the culmination of “efforts of multiple administrations.”)

Trump replied, “I heard that. That was a beauty . . . And I saw where Sleepy Joe tried to take credit for it. I’ve been trying to figure out how that one works.”

After criticizing the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, he added, “What you’ll see now is that other countries will come into that deal and you’ll have peace in the Middle East. And Biden doesn’t even know the names of the countries I’m talking about.”

And then he ended the briefing again.

FYI:  ( QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a false secret plot by an alleged "deep state" against President Donald Trump and his supporters.)

Also FYI: The Epoch Times, is based in New York, and is part of a sprawling international multimedia organization that claims to be the largest source of news and information for the Chinese community outside mainland China and Taiwan. The outlet, which says it reaches more than 1 million readers, operates a series of web sites and YouTube channels beyond its main site that have reported favorably on the QAnon conspiracy theory and the anti-vaccination movements.  This is according to an NBC News investigation published last year.

Copyright G. Ater 2020