OAN Staff Blake Wolf
3:23 PM – Wednesday, February 12, 2025
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended blocking the Associated Press from the Oval Office briefing room after the outlet refused to follow President Donald Trump’s executive order of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
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Earlier this month, AP News also admitted that they have “been paid $37.5 million by other [U.S.] government agencies since 2008,” leading to questions revolving around whether or not government propaganda has been previously being pushed onto its readers.
“The U.S. government has long been an AP customer—through both Democratic and Republican administrations. It licenses AP’s nonpartisan journalism, just like thousands of news outlets and customers around the world,” stated AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton.
Leavitt continued her remarks.
“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Leavitt told the press on Wednesday, after being questioned about the decision to ban the Associated Press from joining the pool of reporters on Tuesday by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
“It is a privilege to cover this White House,” Leavitt continued. “It’s a privilege to be the White House press secretary, and nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the President of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given.”
However, this is nothing new. On the flip side, during the Biden administration, right-wing outlets such as One America News (OAN) and Newsmax were officially banned from the briefing room as well — led by former press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Nevertheless, both networks are now allowed back in the Oval Office briefing room as the Trump administration has restored their press passes.
Leavitt went on to say that she “was very upfront in my briefing on day one, that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable.”
She also added that: “It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.”
“The Secretary of Interior has made that the official designation and the geographical identification name server and Apple has recognized that Google has recognized that pretty much every other outlet in this room has recognized that body of water as the Gulf of America. And it’s very important to this administration that we get that right, not just for people here at home, but also for the rest of the world.”
Leavitt’s comments follow after the outlet revealed that it was “informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.”
Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace responded to the White House’s decision to ban the outlet from the Oval Office briefing room on Tuesday, calling the decision an “alarming” violation of the First Amendment.
“The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech. It is among the most basic tenets of the First Amendment that the government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say. This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment,” Pace wrote in a letter to Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
“At this point, it is not clear to us whether the White House intends to impose these access restrictions against AP reporters on an ongoing basis. We strongly urge the administration to end this practice,” Pace added.
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