President Donald Trump has floated a bonkers plan to turn the White House briefing room into a pool as he escalates his war on the press.
The 80-year-old president has been spiraling since a judge he appointed ordered him Thursday to temporarily restore the credentials of three outlets—CNN, MS NOW, and Politico—that he tried to ban.
But while he had targeted only those three outlets, whining that their coverage of him has been too “negative,” he now appears to be taking aim at the entire press corps covering him.
The president posted side-by-side “before and after” images on Truth Social Sunday afternoon that showed the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the West Wing transformed into a pool.
The “before” side, labeled “Fake News,” shows the room as it looks today, complete with its podium and rows of seats for journalists. The “after” side, labeled “FDR Pool,” transforms it into a pool surrounded by gold ornamentation in Trump’s preferred opulent Mar-a-Lago style.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s post follows a Wall Street Journal report citing current and former administration officials that the billionaire president has repeatedly discussed booting the press from the White House and relocating them to a nearby building.
Trump brought up the idea last month, as he seethed over media coverage of his presidency, one official told the Journal.
He is apparently so serious about kicking the journalists out of the White House that his advisers have had to push back against the move.
Trump has considered moving reporters out of the White House since the beginning of his first term. When he returned for his second, the president and his team explored moving reporters into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—which sits just west of the White House and houses the vice president’s office—or another nearby building, according to the Journal.
The Brady Press Briefing Room was, in fact, once a pool. It was installed in 1933 for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used it for relief from the effects of his polio paralysis, but President Richard Nixon transformed the space into a briefing room in 1970.
“Its construction was both an acknowledgment that the press had become an integral part of the presidency and an effort to provide a more casual alternative for communication between the West Wing and the White House press corps,” the White House Historical Association writes.
The briefing room got its more familiar look during President Ronald Reagan’s first term, when couches and desks were removed and replaced with a lectern and permanent seating for press briefings, according to the White House Historical Association.
Trump’s Truth Social posts are often fed to him by his most devoted aide, Natalie Harp, who also happened to play a critical role in Trump’s initial meltdown that saw him abruptly ban CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from the White House, according to a report.
Sources familiar with the matter told the Journal that Harp had specifically played Trump clips of anchors on MS NOW “criticizing his administration” just hours before he erupted on Truth Social, claiming the outlets had reported, “FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States.”
