Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reportedly revoked or rejected credentials for several journalists who were slated to cover his election night watch event at Mar-a-Lago in seeming retaliation for stories he didn’t like.
Politico, Puck, Axios, Mother Jones, Voice of America and a number of other outlets were barred from the watch event at Trump’s campaign headquarters in Palm Beach, according to multiple reports.
After Puck’s political correspondent Tara Palmeri published a piece about anxiety infusing Trump’s campaign leading up to the election, her credential was turned down, CNN reported. She said in a podcast interview she would still be covering the event, just not from on site.
Calling the decision “unfortunate,” Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly told CNN that “the impediment will not in any way prevent Tara or any of my partners from reporting rigorously and ferociously on the story of our time.”
Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita said on X that Palmeri’s banishment stemmed from “her ‘proclivity’ to write bulls—t.” The campaign did not issue any other comment about the bans.
Politico found its team’s credentials revoked after its magazine reported about the firing of a Trump campaign field director who had been outed as a white nationalist, CNN reported. And Axios reporter Sophia Cai’s credentials were yanked mere hours after she wrote about Trump’s home-stretch anxiety, according to New York magazine.
This isn’t the first time Trump has struck back at or tried to curtail the media. Those efforts date back at least to his presidency, when he barred the Daily News and numerous other outlets from asking questions of press secretary Sean Spicer.
In 2018, Trump notoriously revoked the press credential of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, restoring it only after a judge ordered him to following a lawsuit filed by the outlet. A number of other reporters saw then-President Trump wreak havoc with their credentials as well.
Trump went further in a rally on Sunday, gesturing to the bulletproof glass that has protected him at outdoor events since a gunman tried to assassinate him in July.
“I have this piece of glass here,” he said, pointing to the openings between the panels. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.”