White House memo
In Trump’s Washington, a Moscow-Like Chill Takes Hold
A new administration’s efforts to pressure the news media, punish political opponents and tame the nation’s tycoons evoke the early days of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reign in Russia.
Written by Peter Baker ... Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, reported from Moscow early in President Vladimir V. Putin’s reign and wrote a book about it with his wife. He reported this article from the White House.
Feb. 26, 2025
She asked too many questions that the president didn’t like. She reported too much about criticism of his administration. And so, before long, Yelena Tregubova was pushed out of the Kremlin press pool that covered President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
In the scheme of things, it was a small moment, all but forgotten nearly 25 years later. But it was also a telling one. Mr. Putin did not care for challenges. The rest of the press pool got the message and eventually became what the Kremlin wanted it to be: a collection of compliant reporters who knew to toe the line or else they would pay a price.
The decision by President Trump’s team to handpick which news organizations can participate in the White House press pool that questions him in the Oval Office or travels with him on Air Force One is a step in a direction that no modern American president of either party has ever taken. The White House said it was a privilege, not a right, to have such access, and that it wanted to open space for “new media” outlets, including those that just so happen to support Mr. Trump.
But after the White House’s decision to bar the venerable Associated Press as punishment for its coverage, the message is clear: Any journalist can be expelled from the pool at any time for any reason. There are worse penalties, as Ms. Tregubova would later discover, but in Moscow, at least, her eviction was an early step down a very slippery slope.
The United States is not Russia by any means, and any comparisons risk going too far. Russia barely had any history with democracy then, while American institutions have endured for nearly 250 years. But for those of us who reported there a quarter century ago, Mr. Trump’s Washington is bringing back memories of Mr. Putin’s Moscow in the early days.
The news media is being pressured. Lawmakers have been tamed. Career officials deemed disloyal are being fired. Prosecutors named by a president who promised “retribution” are targeting perceived adversaries and dropping cases against allies or others who do his bidding. Billionaire tycoons who once considered themselves masters of the universe are prostrating themselves before him.
Judges who temporarily block administration decisions that they believe may be illegal are being threatened with impeachment. The uniformed military, which resisted being used as a political instrument in Mr. Trump’s first term, has now been purged of its highest-ranking officers and lawyers. And a president who calls himself “the king,” ostensibly in jest, is teasing that he may try to stay in power beyond the limits of the Constitution.
Some versions of this are not new, of course. Other presidents have taken actions that looked heavy-handed or put pressure on opponents. No president in my experience at the White House, which goes back to 1996, particularly liked news coverage of him, and certainly there have been times when journalists were penalized for their reporting.
After an article on whether Vice President Dick Cheney might be dropped from the re-election ticket in 2004, The New York Times found it no longer had a seat on Air Force Two. President Barack Obama’s team tried to exclude Fox News from a briefing offered to other networks, only to back down when the rest of the press corps stood up for Fox. President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s staff cut The Times off an email distribution list as punishment at one point.
But those relatively contained disputes were nothing like what is happening now. The White House takeover of the pool — a rotating group of about 13 correspondents, photographers and technicians given close access to the president so they can report back to their colleagues — upends the way the president has been covered for generations.
The alarm has been felt by media outlets across the spectrum. Just as the other networks backed Fox against the Obama administration, Fox has backed The Associated Press against the Trump White House and its senior White House correspondent criticized the pool takeover. The precedent being set now, certainly, could be used by a future Democratic administration against media that it disfavored.
On Wednesday, the day after Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, announced the takeover, neither the A.P. nor Reuters, two mainstays of the White House press corps for decades, were included in the pool. Newsmax and The Blaze, two conservative outlets, were invited to take their places.
The rest of the broadcast networks remained, as did other traditional organizations like Bloomberg and NPR. The pool got a chance to ask Mr. Trump and his billionaire patron Elon Musk questions at the top of a cabinet meeting for about an hour, proof, according to White House aides, that they are not shielding him from scrutiny.
Image
Karoline Leavitt, in a red blazer, at a lectern during a news briefing.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, cast the takeover in populist terms.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
“A select group of D.C.-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege of press access at the White House,” Ms. Leavitt said when she disclosed the takeover, casting it in populist terms. “All journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table. So, by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people.”
The move, of course, “does not give the power back to the people — it gives power to the White House,” as Jacqui Heinrich, the senior White House correspondent at Fox, put it on social media. Ms. Heinrich, who sits on the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which had traditionally decided pool membership, said the group has long welcomed new voices.
All of this is taking place against the backdrop of a major shift in foreign policy as Mr. Trump pivots away from Ukraine and toward Mr. Putin’s Russia. In recent days, he has blamed Ukraine for Russia’s full-scale invasion of it in 2022. He also called its popularly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator without elections,” while offering no words of reproach for Russia or Mr. Putin. “He’s a very smart guy,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin on Wednesday. “He’s a very cunning person.”
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