Gee. If Russians can openly waltz into the WH, what
are their agents, Musk and Trump passing to them in
secret?
As the White House cracks down on which news outlets
are allowed to have access to President Donald Trump,
it seems that a member of Russian state media was
somehow able to make their way into the Oval Office
Friday.
While mainstream outlets the Associated Press and
Reuters were kept out of a tense discussion between
Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy, a member of Tass, a Russian news agency that
pushes propaganda about Russia’s “liberation” of
Ukraine, was briefly in the room with the two world
leaders.
A White House official told Politico that Tass was “not
on the approved list of media” for the day’s press
pool.
“As soon as it came to the attention of press office
staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by
the Press Secretary,” the official said, adding that
the reporter wasn’t on the list of the now-canceled
press conference after, either.
The White House did not explain how the reporter was
able to gain access to the Oval Office, despite not
being on the list for entry.
Earlier this week, White House press secretary Karoline
Leavitt announced that the White House would determine
members of the press pool, leaving it to craft its own
unit of propagandists and shutting out the White House
Correspondents’ Association. The change in the rules
comes after the Trump administration was sued for
revoking the Associated Press’s access, over the wire’s
unwillingness to pretend the Gulf of Mexico is called
the “Gulf of America.”
Trump has increasingly aligned himself with Russian
President Vladimir Putin, echoing Moscow’s rhetoric
criticizing Ukraine and its leader, and mounting an
all-out detonation during their meeting Friday.
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