The White House removed the Wall Street Journal from the coverage pool for President Donald Trump‘s trip to Scotland following the outlet’s coverage of Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump is headed across the pond this weekend for a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and is expected to visit his golf properties in Scotland.
The WSJ was slated to serve as the print pooler for the final two days of the trip, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday afternoon that would no longer be the case. The outlet reported last week that Trump wrote a letter to Epstein that was collected as part of a gift for the disgraced financier’s 50th birthday. On Friday afternoon, Trump sued the outlet, its parent company, and the two reporters on the story’s byline.
“As the appeals court confirmed, the Wall Street Journal or any other news outlet is not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in his private workspaces. Thirteen diverse outlets will participate in the press pool to cover the President’s trip to Scotland,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Due to the Wall Street Journal‘s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board. Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump, and the White House has taken significant steps to include as many voices as possible.”
White House officials declined to say whether the WSJ would be barred from all future pooling opportunities or just the Scotland trip.
This isn’t the first time the White House has directly clashed with news outlets during Trump’s second term.
Earlier this year, the White House wrested control of the protective pool from the White House Correspondents’ Association, opting instead to determine on its own terms the order and frequency with which news outlets fill the 13 pool slots on any given day.
Furthermore, Trump previously barred the Associated Press from all pool coverage opportunities after it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in line with Trump’s executive name change.
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The AP sued the White House over the decision, but the ruling allowed the White House to also remove Bloomberg and Reuters from the daily pool and move the three outlets into the broader, monthly print rotation.
Representatives for the WSJ did not return requests for comment.
