While President Donald Trump wreaks havoc in the White House, one of his most trusted cronies announced plans to introduce new changes to the briefing room.
In her first press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced plans to allow “new media voices” to attend her press conferences. Notably, that could include anyone ranging from TikTok content creators to podcasters to reporters from conservative news outlets that generally don’t challenge the president.
“It is a priority of this White House to honor the First Amendment and it is a fact that Americans are consuming their news media from various platforms, especially young people,” Leavitt said. “As the youngest press secretary in history, thanks to President Trump, I take great pride in opening up this room to new media voices to share the president’s message with as many Americans as possible.”
She added that the White House will now “encourage anybody in this country, whether you are a TikTok content creator, a blogger, [or] podcaster,” who is creating “legitimate news content, no matter the medium,” to apply for White House press credentials.
We’re already seeing how this might play out. While the first question during Leavitt’s briefing went to a new media voice, it wasn’t from a Washington outsider. Axios cofounder Mike Allen asked the first question, which was about DeepSeek and artificial intelligence. Leavitt then pivoted to a reporter from the conservative Breitbart website.
According to the New York Post, several right-wing media personalities—including those from One America News Network, Real America’s Voice, and Steve Bannon’s War Room—were also among the first to ask questions.
The changes announced on Tuesday come after Trump practically declared war against the mainstream media. During his first term in office, the president castigated journalists who dared to challenge him and called the media the “enemy of the people.”
During his campaign for his second term, Trump largely eschewed several mainstream media outlets and instead opted to sit for interviews with podcasters and internet personalities. More recently, he appointed a new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, who recently revived three complaints levied against ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News.
Leavitt first announced her want for new voices in the briefing room in December, during an appearance on Fox News. According to the Daily Beast, Leavitt then suggested that she wanted to reward the “podcasters and influencers” who helped Trump get elected to a second term in the White House.
Joe Rogan
By that, she seemed to be referring to the coterie of content creators, most of whom are white and male, who delivered an unfiltered, pro-Trump worldview to their audiences. Over the past several years, right-wing influencers have come to dominate talk radio—and those podcasts did indeed help determine last year’s presidential election. In the final days of his campaign, Trump appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the most listened-to podcasts in the world.
And it’s not entirely surprising that the new Trump administration is throwing a bone at TikTok content creators, either. The president’s low-rated inauguration was sponsored by the beleaguered app, which was temporarily banned after former President Joe Biden signed a law last year that would force the app to shut down in the states unless it was sold to another company.
In addition to giving these voices the same level of access that legitimate reporters receive, Leavitt said that, as part of his second term, Trump would speak to all media outlets, some of whom would receive specially designated chairs in the press room. She also said that Trump’s communications team would also work to restore the press passes for the more than 400 journalists whose passes were “wrongly revoked” by Biden’s administration. This occurred after guidelines were changed for all journalists seeking a “hard pass” for regular access to the White House.
“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 said. “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.”
Of course, Democrats have courted influencers too. Remember that Biden hosted social media influencers in the White House in August as part of a Creator Economy Conference. What makes Leavitt’s announcement more daunting, though, is the fact that the Trump administration is essentially admonishing traditional news media and instead awarding conservative voices who will likely give him preferential treatment.
And as one Trump official predicted to Politico in November, imagine a briefing room where The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman sits next to Joe Rogan.
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