I’m a White House reporter. Here’s the side of the Trump administration you don’t see on TV

I’m a White House reporter. Here’s the side of the Trump administration you don’t see on TV

Andrew Feinberg

Mon, January 19, 2026 at 11:34 AM UTC

10 min read

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I’m a White House reporter. Here’s the side of the Trump administration you don’t see on TV

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When Donald Trump took the oath of office one year ago, I was watching on a laptop screen in the White House briefing room while bracing myself from the absurdly cold air that flooded the small space every time someone opened the door.

As he delivered not one but two separate stemwinding addresses in the Capitol — first the traditional post-inaugural speech in the Capitol rotunda, then a second, far more partisan and unscripted rant to supporters who’d been seated in an overflow area — I looked up to see a colleague from another news outlet who, like me, had been on the White House beat since the start of Trump’s tumultuous first term nearly a decade earlier.

As the president rambled on about the various grievances and slights he’d been made to endure since losing the 2020 election and decamping to Florida for what became just a brief exile from power under the Biden administration, she rolled her eyes and turned to me with a knowing smile.

“Here we go again,” she said.

Those of us who covered Trump’s first administration thought we knew what to expect. Boy, were we wrong.

The author (at right) in a gaggle with President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One on May 4, 2025 returning to the White House after spending the weekend in Florida. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images) (AFP/Getty)

His first four years in power were often a non-stop barrage of news that left journalists exhausted but well-fed on copious amounts of leaked information from various camps within the West Wing looking to knife one another, plus less useful — and often far less truthful — information delivered by a rotating cast of press secretaries and spokespersons.

Sean Spicer’s now-infamous 2017 debut in the briefing room, during which he castigated the press for reporting on the far smaller crowd that attended Trump’s first inaugural compared with either of Barack Obama’s swearings-in, set the tone that more or less characterized the next four years. Things got weirder from there, with his appearances in the briefing room becoming so bizarre — remember “Holocaust centers?” — that he was infamously parodied by Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live.

Press briefings got fewer and farther between as Trump moved on from the oft-combative Spicer to the more affable but equally unhelpful Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who is now living her best life as governor of Arkansas) to Stephanie Grisham, who did not hold a single press briefing for her entire tenure.

And even though Trump’s official schedule didn’t kick off until mid-morning then, reporters such as myself got in the habit of arriving at the White House as early at 7am because administration officials, most often Kellyanne Conway, would engage in pugilistic back-and-forths with us after appearing on Fox News.

The president himself discovered the briefing room during the Covid-19 pandemic, often spending as many as 90 minutes a day there as he took questions from a pared-down press corps while Americans sheltered at home.

And while Trump often liked to attack or belittle specific reporters or outlets, his administration more or less let us do our jobs.

We expected more of the same when Trump was sworn in for a second time, and as I and other colleagues greeted the incoming Trump II press staff — some of whom we’d gotten to know during his previous term — on inauguration day, one person remarked to me that the atmosphere had a “first day of school” vibe that portended a smoother ride than last time around.

Well, guess again.

Karoline Leavitt and The Independent’s White House reporter Andrew Feinberg (at right) in March. (Getty)

To be sure, there are positive differences between Trump I and Trump II from the perspective of a beat reporter. Whereas the Trump I press staff was more likely to scream at you than answer a question if you walked into their office, their counterparts in his second administration are often so cheerful and friendly that it’s more than a bit disconcerting.

Unlike the heady days when Spicer, Sanders and Grisham ran an amateurish and uncommunicative press shop, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Communications Director Steven Cheung are generally professional behind the scenes and their subordinates actually respond to queries on a regular basis.

But on the whole, this administration has not been much like the last.

Unlike the leaky ship that was Trump I, Trump’s White House this time around is far more disciplined. From a reporter’s perspective, that’s not exactly a good thing.

But the real difference is how Trump’s new-look team has put his combative attitude towards the free and independent press into action.

In February, Leavitt’s office announced it would take control of the “pool” rotation under which a group of outlets — including The Independent — cover Trump as he holds court in the Oval Office and while he travels around the country aboard Air Force One.

While I and my colleagues from reputable and legitimate news outlets still take our turns and dutifully file pool reports that are used by the rest of the press corps to write the “first draft of history,” we’ve been joined by more and more people chosen by the White House while some outlets (such as the AP) have been banned for dubious reasons that are currently being evaluated by the courts, such as refusing to acknowledge Trump’s proclamation that the Gulf of Mexico should now be referred to as the Gulf of America.

Some of the newcomers are from conservative-leaning outlets who approach their jobs in a responsible, reputable manner. But others, to be frank, are sycophants and clowns who do little to help inform the American people.

Leavitt has often given pride of place to these people by letting them ask the first question at White House briefings (traditionally the role of the AP) in a “new media” seat located in a section of the briefing room usually reserved for White House staff.

President Donald Trump gestures to a 'Gulf of America' graphic in the Oval Office. The U.S. Geological Survey, a federal agency in charge of the country's geographic names, told its staff not to respond to journalists' questions after Trump first announced the change, a new report reveals (AFP via Getty Images)

In one instance, she hosted notorious plagiarist turned MAGA troll Benny Johnson there and let him kick off a briefing with a fabricated tale of how he and his family had fled Washington after their “house was set ablaze in an arson” (according to the DC Fire Department, it was his neighbor’s house that was set on fire).

Another Leavitt guest, beanie-wearing podcaster Tim Pool, used his time there to complain about how legitimate news outlets had characterized him and other “new media” seat occupants and asked Leavitt to join him in disparaging the mainstream press. Leavitt diplomatically replied that the administration “welcomes diverse viewpoints.“

More recently, I (and others) have been placed on White House-authored lists attacking us as biased in retaliation for reporting accurately on the president’s own words and actions.

My counterparts in the Pentagon press corps and elsewhere in Washington have had it worse.

Last year, they surrendered their press credentials en masse after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that they all sign documents pledging not to ask anyone in the federal government or elsewhere for information about anything while only publishing pre-approved information — the definition of propaganda.

Ex-congressman Matt Gaetz, now a journalist at One America News Network, asks a question at a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday December 2 2025 (Department of Defense)

They were replaced in the halls of the Pentagon by a coterie of sycophants and influencers aligned with Hegseth and his vision for his department.

One attempt at a briefing for the “new Pentagon press corps” saw seats in the Pentagon briefing room taken by self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, the disgraced ex-Florida congressman who was briefly Trump’s pick for Attorney General before resigning from the House in a fruitless attempt to avoid release of a damning ethics committee report that allegedly found substantial evidence he had sex with a 17-year-old girl and allegedly also was found in possession of illegal drugs. Gaetz has denied both allegations and a Justice Department probe into Gaetz’s alleged actions with the girl produced no charges.

And just this past week, FBI agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter who the government alleged to be communicating with a suspected leaker — even though it’s not illegal for a journalist to receive leaked documents, even classified ones.

Vice President JD Vance took time from his week to shout at the press about their coverage of last week’s shooting in Minneapolis (Reuters)

Agents seized her phones and laptops, ostensibly as part of a probe into a Defense Department employee who’d mishandled classified information, but perhaps as a warning to others who might dare correspond with journalists from inside the government.

And while the president has largely avoided the briefing room during his first year back, he has dispatched Vice President JD Vance there on more than one occasion, most recently last week when he appeared there to berate me and my White House press corps colleagues about coverage of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good.

One would think the Vice President of the United States has better things to do than scream at a bunch of journalists because he doesn’t like the headlines on a story, but here we are.

And Leavitt hasn’t been shy about unleashing over-the-top rebukes when cornered with legitimate questions she’d not answer. Days ago, she laid into one of my colleagues from The Hill — an affable gentleman who originally hails from Northern Ireland — for having the temerity to offer an opinion contrary to hers after she’d asked him to tell her what he thought of last week’s shooting.

She reacted to his honest answer by angrily raising her voice and smearing him as “a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion” and “a left-wing hack” who was “pretending like you’re a journalist.”

It’s a tactic Trump himself has used on numerous occasions — often with female or non-white journalists — when hit with tough questions on subjects he’d prefer to avoid.

Still, the dirty little secret about Trump — then and now — is that he actually likes reporters. One of the things he missed most about the presidency wasn’t the plane or the other similar perquisites of the world’s most powerful job, it was having a “pool” of reporters he could summon any time he wanted to talk about anything at all.

For all his talk about “fake news,” he’s spent years calling journalists and still takes calls from them on his mobile phone (and if you’re reading this, Mr. President, you can always ask Karoline for my number).

What’s different — and chilling — this time around is that Trump has now surrounded himself with people who actually believe the anti-press talk he has spent years spouting in public while remaining friendly in private.

Trump may occasionally call me and my colleagues “the enemy of the people,” but people like Vice President JD Vance, Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and others actually believe it.

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