Trump campaign bans an NBC reporter from an event in New Hampshire
Donald J. Trump, who popularized the term “fake news” and as president called the news media “the enemy of the people,” is once again clashing with journalists over press access, this time to his 2024 campaign events.
An NBC News correspondent said Sunday that aides to Mr. Trump stopped him from covering an event in New Hampshire where the former president was expected to make his first in-person remarks after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida withdrew out of the race.
Vaughn Hillyard, a longtime NBC News correspondent who regularly covers Mr. Trump, planned to attend as a pool reporter representing five major TV networks. But he told other campaign journalists that the Trump team objected to his presence.
“Your pooler was told by NBC News that if he was the designated pooler, the pool would be closed for the day,” Mr. Hillyard wrote in an email to the rest of the pool obtained by The New York Times . “After confirming during the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed around 2:20 p.m. that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today.”
Because candidate events often take place in cramped quarters, campaign journalists have long relied on a so-called pool system, in which one reporter attends on behalf of other news organizations. The television pool consists of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC, with the networks alternating according to a preset schedule. Each network selects the individual journalist assigned to represent the pool.
A Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, acknowledged that the network pool did not attend the New Hampshire event, but he said the Trump campaign “does not exclude reporters based on their reporting.” Mr. Cheung said the campaign is holding a number of events without a networking pool, noting that the pooling system for presidential candidates is less formal than the one in place to cover the president in the White House.
“We will cooperate with each other when it makes sense for both parties,” Mr Cheung said.
NBC News declined to comment. Later on Sunday, Mr. Hillyard was allowed to attend a rally Mr. Trump held at an opera house in Rochester, N.H
Sunday's incident reflected several episodes in Trump's political career in which he denied journalists access to events or press conferences. In the 2016 campaign, he banned reporters from The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News from attending certain rallies. As president, his administration revoked the press pass of a CNN reporter and barred certain journalists from certain public events.
Mr. Hillyard has previously irritated Mr. Trump with questions the former president deemed impertinent. Last March, during a meeting with journalists aboard his plane, Mr. Trump grabbed Mr. Hillyard's phone and asked that he be removed. “Get him out of here,” Trump told aides, according to audio published by Vanity fair.
On Friday, at a separate event in New Hampshire, Mr. Hillyard said pressed repeatedly Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a close Trump ally, on Mr. Trump being found liable in a civil lawsuit for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll.