As President Donald Trump barnstorms the country ahead of the midterms, on top of his usual White House events this week, he’s had some pointed exchanges with journalists in his path. He called one reporter a “dummy,” another “a stupid person” and a third “a sick person.”
The angry name-calling comes as tensions between the White House and the media have ratcheted up.
The White House this week demanded a retraction from Politico under threat of reviewing the publication’s access, blocked a reporter with The Independent from joining the president’s travel pool after a heated exchange in the Oval Office and declined to rule out evicting the press corps from the building altogether. The FCC’s chair warned broadcasters that airing “Fake Polls” could put them crosswise with their licensing obligations.
White House counsel Will Scharf sent a letter to Politico’s global editor-in-chief, Jonathan Greenberger, on Monday demanding the retraction and removal of three articles about chief of staff Susie Wiles within 48 hours and warning of a potential review of Politico’s White House access. It coincided with ongoing litigation between the news organization and the White House. Politico, CNN and MS NOW had their hard passes revoked in September, which were reinstated via an Oct. 13 injunction that’s under appeal. (The Washington Sun has signed onto an amicus brief filed in this case in support of the news outlets.)
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As Axios first reported, Scharf accused the outlet of publishing “demonstrably false and defamatory articles in an apparent effort to manufacture a narrative of dysfunction and infighting.” The targeted pieces included two Playbook items concerning potential calls to replace Wiles and a subsequent White House reaction, alongside an Oct. 16 article about Wiles’ role in arranging former press secretary Katie Zacharia’s Fox News interview with Sean Hannity.
Politico published a new version of the Wiles–Zacharia story on Wednesday evening. The correction at the top of the article said the previous version, including its headline, “mischaracterized the role” Wiles played and Politico’s “follow-up reporting indicates she did not play a direct role in setting up the interview.” The outlet appended the same language to Thursday’s Playbook and to a post on X replacing an earlier one.
It left the other two items alone. In a letter to Scharf dated Tuesday and reviewed by The Washington Sun, attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. wrote that Politico “categorically rejects the false accusations” and had reexamined all three articles before concluding one warranted correction. The timing and substance of the demand, Boutrous wrote, “further confirms the unlawful retaliatory and viewpoint discriminatory motives” behind the September ban.
The White House was unmoved. “Politico should apologize to its dwindling readership for knowingly publishing lies,” spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said. “The facts are indisputable: the Chief of Staff had absolutely nothing to do with booking or authorizing any interview.”
A White House official did not respond to The Sun’s question about what the review would involve, or whether it could entail credential or pool changes.
During an Oval Office event Tuesday that included Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Andrew Feinberg, The Independent’s White House correspondent, asked why anyone would use the new government fraud tip line when an 1863 statute already pays whistleblowers a share of what the government recovers.
Vance called the question dishonest, saying the initiative covers more than the False Claims Act. Trump asked Feinberg who he was with. Later, Trump pointed at him: “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you better be careful.” When Feinberg tried to ask a question later, Trump asked, “What’s wrong with you, are you a sick person?” and added, “I actually think there’s something wrong with you.” Vance later called Feinberg an “imbecile” on X, which Feinberg responded to in a separate post. He published an article the next day detailing the event.
“For doing my job,” Feinberg wrote, “I became the target of Trump and his team.”
On Wednesday evening, the White House Press Office emailed Feinberg to say he would “not be the print pooler” for Trump’s Iowa rally, The Independent reported. Feinberg confirmed the removal to The Washington Sun but declined to comment further.
“The White House Correspondents’ Association strongly objects to the decision to restrict a journalist’s coverage simply because the president didn’t care for their questioning. That is retaliation,” WHCA President Jacqui Heinrich said Wednesday on X. “The American public’s right to an independent press depends on reporters being able to do their jobs without fear that challenging the president will cut off their access.”
Asked who made the decision and whether it extends beyond the single assignment, a White House official did not address Feinberg specifically, saying that “no person and no journalist has a constitutional right to access the President’s Oval Office, Air Force One, or other sensitive and private facilities.”
As Trump departed for a South Carolina rally on Wednesday, he turned his frustration on two more reporters. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed him on his decision to waive Russia sanctions he had signed into law last month and on whether the release of U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard amounted to an exchange.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her. “You’re a low-IQ person, you’re a dummy, and you work for CNN.”
Minutes later, ABC News’ Karen Travers asked a version of the same question to him. He responded, “Are you a stupid person? Who do you work for?” Regarding ABC News, he said: “And by the way, your network is the worst of all.”
A CNN spokesperson defended Collins, calling her “an exceptional journalist, reporting every day from the White House and the field with real depth and tenacity.”
The network is pressing a broader complaint. In an Oct. 19 letter to the Justice Department reviewed by The Sun, Boutrous — who represents CNN in addition to Politico — wrote that the White House appears to be implementing “a new unstated policy” barring CNN from the Oval Office and Air Force One and demanded written confirmation by 5 p.m. Thursday that it would stop. Absent that, CNN “will be forced to pursue additional judicial relief.”
CNN has been denied a seat on Air Force One when scheduled to have one since Sept. 18. Those incidents — at least four, per the letter — included the president’s Oct. 16 trip to Georgia and Florida, which came three days after the injunction. The White House has provided no written notice or explanation, Boutrous wrote, and has never directly told CNN it is excluded.
The letter argues the exclusions matter because of where the president now takes questions. He appeared in the White House briefing room twice in 2025, taking about 51 questions, while fielding nearly 2,000 in the Oval Office. Of the roughly 5,000 questions he has answered this term, 97% came there or around Air Force One, the letter said.
Asked about the pool exclusions, a White House official said that Trump “is by far the most transparent President in history, as demonstrated by his many open press gaggles and long White House events this week.”
Then there is the building itself. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Trump is increasingly pushing aides to move reporters out of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room and has thought about replacing it with an indoor swimming pool. (The room sits atop a pool built for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, which Richard Nixon covered in 1970.)
Asked whether a relocation is under consideration and whether journalists would retain the same access to the West Wing, White House communications director Steven Cheung did not dispute the Times’ account.
“America is rightly distrustful of the Fake News Media because they fabricate stories based off lies and sources who are not even privy to any type of information,” he said in a statement to The Sun. “All options remain on the table and we will make an announcement when appropriate.”
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr added a warning of his own Wednesday, saying in a post on X that “broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes” amid what he called “Fake Polls and Suppression Polls.”
The post did not name any outlets, but followed Wedgewood Polls’ acknowledgement Tuesday that nearly all of its midterm surveys were fabricated. The New York Times pulled 15 of them from its tracking pages later that night.
Anna Gomez, the FCC’s only Democratic commissioner, objected. “FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith,” she wrote on X.
Boutrous’ letter about CNN says that a day after the injunction, the White House issued a statement indicative of its bottom line: “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office.”
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