White House Says It Is Opening Briefing Room to “Podcasters, Social Media Influencers and Content Creators”
Big changes are coming to the Brady Press Briefing Room in the West Wing of the White House.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, making her debut behind the podium Tuesday, announced that the Trump White House would open up the briefing room to “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators,” and would be creating a dedicated seat in the first row for new media.
Trump, of course, leveraged new media to great effect during the 2024 campaign, appearing on podcasts hosted by the likes of Joe Rogan, Theo Von and the Nelk Boys, in addition to more traditional TV appearances. At his victory party at Mar-a-Lago, UFC CEO Dana White called out some of the podcasters by name.
“In keeping with this revolutionary media approach that President Trump deployed during the campaign, the Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media, who are seated in this room,” Leavitt announced to the briefing room. “Because according to recent polling from Gallup, American’s trust in mass media has fallen to a record low. Millions of Americans — especially young people — have turned from traditional television outlets and newspapers to consume their news from podcasts, blogs, social media and other independent outlets. It’s essential to our team that we share President Trump’s message everywhere and adapt this White House to the new media landscape in 2025.”
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She also said that the White House is looking “to restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration.”
“In light of these announcements, our first questions for today’s briefing will go to these new media members whose outlets despite being some of the most viewed news websites in the country, have not been given seats in this room,” she continued.
While the first question did go to a new media voice, it was not exactly a Washington outsider. Axios co-founder Mike Allen got the question, asking about DeepSeek and artificial intelligence.
