Trump Finds Another Way to Take Revenge on Murdoch for Epstein Letter

In retaliation for reporting on Donald Trump’s relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, the White House is ousting The Wall Street Journal from the press pool for the president’s upcoming trip to Scotland.

Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement Monday that no publication is “guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in his private workspaces,” according to Politico. “Due to the Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board. Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump, and the White House has taken significant steps to include as many voices as possible.”

Leavitt is, of course, referring to the Journal’s recent bombshell report that, in 2003, Trump sent a lewd 50th birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump denies the veracity of the letter and is meritlessly suing the paper over its report—further stoking the ongoing firestorm over the administration’s perceived lack of transparency surrounding the case of the late financier and sex criminal.

Politico reports that the White House declined to comment on whether the Journal’s removal from the press pool would be permanent. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time Trump punished a publication by restricting its ability to cover his administration. After all, his ban on the Associated Press for failing to change its style guide to ratify his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” remains in effect.

Be it in retaliating against publications deemed insufficiently friendly, seizing control of the press pool from the White House Correspondents’ Association, or altering the makeup of the press room such that administration officials receive more questions from unctuous right-wing media groups, Trump’s White House appears as hell-bent as ever on defanging the press of its ability to function as a watchdog of the government.