Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon’s press secretary, approached the lectern on Tuesday morning. “Welcome to the Department of War,” she said.
The greeting was wholly appropriate, considering that Ms. Wilson was speaking to a briefing room of people undergoing something of an orientation program this week at the Pentagon. Most of them are media figures newly credentialed to work as journalists within the sprawling complex, agreeing to strict new rules that nearly all traditional correspondents have refused to sign.
The result has been a press corps full of people who are outspoken cheerleaders for the administration. And Ms. Wilson expressed satisfaction with the turnabout. “Legacy media chose to self-deport from this building,” she said, adding: “The American people don’t trust these propagandists because they stopped telling the truth. So we’re not going to beg these old gatekeepers to come back.”
The journalists who refused to sign onto the new rules work at news organizations such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, national TV networks and wire services. They, as well as many media lawyers, have argued that the new rules conflict with the First Amendment.
Not long after, the chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, announced an infusion of new voices — mostly pro-Trump commentators and outlets with limited past coverage of the military. They include Laura Loomer, the influential pro-Trump activist; LindellTV, an upstart digital news site known for promoting election conspiracy theories; and Gateway Pundit, a site that has also often spread conspiracy theories.
“We’re welcoming new media outlets that actually reach Americans, ask real questions and don’t pursue a biased agenda,” Ms. Wilson said in Tuesday’s briefing.
The “real questions” at Tuesday’s briefing produced little in the way of tension between Ms. Wilson and the assembled questioners, despite the recent uproar in Washington over lethal strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats. Reporting has raised questions about the legality of the attacks and the role played by Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense.
The attacks did come up, but inquiries showed deference to the department’s position. So did questions about other matters, including Iran’s nuclear facilities and National Guard deployments in U.S. cities.
Ms. Loomer, however, pressed the Pentagon on its defense partnership with Qatar, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood. Last week, President Trump signed an executive order that was a step toward designating parts of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terror organizations. Ms. Loomer had publicly expressed outrage that the order did not go far enough, suggesting that the Trump administration had refrained from targeting the Muslim Brotherhood more broadly because of influence from Qatar.
“We take very seriously our partnerships,” Ms. Wilson said.
James O’Keefe, who founded the right-wing group Project Veritas and now serves as chief executive of O’Keefe Media Group, asked Ms. Wilson about the steps that the department was taking against Pentagon personnel aligned with the “movement” to resist Mr. Trump. Ms. Wilson replied: “That’s why the work that you all do is so important. This is a big building, and we want to make sure we have the absolute best people.”
Matt Gaetz, a former congressman and host of a program on One America News Network, asked Ms. Wilson about U.S. planning in the event that Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, leaves office. “The department has a contingency plan for everything. We are a planning organization,” Ms. Wilson said.
Ms. Wilson was also asked whether the department would provide regular briefings, something it has not done during Mr. Trump’s second administration. “We’d love to. It’d be great to get everybody in here,” she said.
Video of the briefing was posted on the Defense Department’s official pages on YouTube and Facebook, among other places. Since legacy media outlets that didn’t sign the new restrictions weren’t allowed in, there was no live coverage on C-SPAN or other major news networks. (C-SPAN declined to provide a statement on the situation.)
The refashioned Pentagon press corps, a digitally aggressive crowd, narrated its arrival at the building’s media areas on Monday. At least three press corps members, for instance, claimed to have secured desk space that was once occupied by The Washington Post or one of its Pentagon reporters, Dan Lamothe.
Acknowledging the mix-up on X, one of the new members wrote: “Okay, it was possibly a Bloomberg desk, we were told it was WaPo. The point is: we’re in, you’re out.”
Chris Cameron contributed reporting.
The post New Pentagon Press Corps Test-Drives the Briefing Room appeared first on New York Times.
