Trump Administration May Require Drug Testing for White House Reporters; Boot the Press Out of the White House

A free press is vital to our Republic. That’s a core principle expressed by our Constitution. How that is implemented is another matter. With the mutual love affair between Mr. Obama and the mainstream media not transferring to Mr. Trump, the question over how the press will be dealt with is a pertinent one.

Mr. Trump will not shrink in the face of attacks from the press. He actually seems to enjoy responding to them. And it’s also clear that as the relationship with the press changes, so will those who have access to the president during press briefings. None if this makes big media happy.

One novel idea that has been proposed is to subject the press corp to random drug testing.

One proposal on dealing with the media that was pitched to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team calls for drug testing the White House press corps.

Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media were a cornerstone of his campaign and last week he called BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage,” but forcing reporters to undergo random drug tests would provoke a media meltdown.

No decision has been announced on that proposal yet, although a “media meltdown” would surely be one result.

Another proposal that seems more likely is to move the press corps out of the White House entirely. The symbolism of loosing their privileged position would no doubt stir the outrage and indignation of big media.

The simmering cold, if heating up with every passing day, war between Trump and the press may be about to turn conventional, with the occasional chance of an ICBM.

Just days after calling out CNN fake news during his first press conference of 2017, Esquire reports that according to three senior officials on the transition team, the incoming Trump administration is “seriously considering” a plan to evict the press corps from the White House.

If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.

The other result of this would be offering much more room for other elements of the press, representatives of news organizations that are not mainstream and for which there is not enough space in the current press room.

Trump’s press secretary tried to cast the possible relocation of the press corps as a matter, in part, of logistics. “There’s been so much interest in covering a President Donald Trump,” he said. “A question is: Is a room that has forty-nine seats adequate? When we had that press conference the other day, we had thousands of requests, and we capped it at four hundred. Is there an opportunity to potentially allow more members of the media to be part of this? That’s something we’re discussing.”

Of course, should this decision be made, the major media outlets are going to accuse Trump of taking this action partly out of a personal dislike for much of the press. And in this case, they are probably right.

Other Trump staffers, however, explain that it’s not business, it’s personal. “They are the opposition party,” a senior official was quoted by Esquire. “I want ’em out of the building. We are taking back the press room.”

The press is stuck. They don’t like Trump or his policies, but they do have to cover the man. The willingness of Mr. Trump to strike back when they attack annoys them to no end. They consider themselves the entitled elite, whose position they are not prepared to share with they consider to be lesser reporters.

In that sense, wouldn’t it be great to see representatives of CNN sharing the same room with the same access to the president as members of the alternative media?

Source: Page Six

Source: ZeroHedge