President Trump on Monday followed up his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over last week's Jeffrey Epstein story by banishing one of the newspaper's reporters from Air Force One for an upcoming Scotland trip. The White House said it was removing a Journal reporter from the pool covering the president's visit this weekend to his golf courses in Turnberry and Aberdeen in Scotland, the AP reports. The Journal's Tarini Parti had been scheduled to cover the trip.
"Due to the Wall Street Journal's fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the 13 outlets on board," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Journal and Rupert Murdoch on Friday over the newspaper's article about a sexually suggestive letter bearing Trump's name that was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein's birthday. The president has denied having anything to do with it. The Journal leans conservative editorially but hasn't shied away from critical coverage of Trump in both its opinion and news sections, the AP notes. Other Murdoch outlets—Fox News Channel and the New York Post—are much friendlier to him.
The White House, upending a century of tradition, took control of the press pool in February after the administration clashed with the AP over the news organization's refusal to change its style guidelines to reflect Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. "As the appeals court confirmed, the Wall Street Journal or any other news outlet are not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in his private workspaces," Leavitt said Monday, per CNN.
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