President Donald Trump’s ribbon-cutting for the new White House helipad went out to the public with no usable audio, leaving journalists unable to hear a word he said.
Trump cut the ribbon Monday afternoon on the South Lawn beside Marine One, the White House announced on X. The administration’s own feed provided the only live video. The television networks that normally film the president had suspended that coverage earlier in the day.
“The audio is completely garbled and we are unable to hear the president’s remarks,” New York Times media reporter Michael M. Grynbaum wrote on X.
The networks did not send camera crews, Grynbaum said. He was watching the ceremony on an official White House YouTube stream.
“Trump made his first remarks without the TV pool and it is impossible to hear him through the White House feed,” wrote Politico’s Sophia Cai. “Nothing but static for 9 minutes and Trump is wheels up.”
NewsNation correspondent Hannah Brandt, who was on the South Lawn, said the noise from Marine One drowned out the president’s remarks and that he took no questions from the press.
“Here is what happens when you don’t have the White House TV Pool. You have video of Trump – but you can’t hear what the President is saying,” Washington correspondent Jamie Dupree wrote on X.
“Trump was speaking. But on this feed – without TV pool – viewers could not hear him speak,” wrote Rob Crilly of the Washington Examiner.
The dispute began Sept. 18, when Trump announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.
Reporters for all three outlets were turned away from the complex the next morning, and their press credentials were seized, CNN reported.
The three outlets sued Trump and several senior officials on Monday, accusing the White House of punishing them over past coverage in violation of the First Amendment. They also asked a court to immediately restore their reporters’ credentials and access, the outlet reported.
Under a decades-old arrangement, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News take turns as the television pool, filming the president and sharing the video with every other news organization, according to Mediaite.
CNN had been scheduled to serve as the primary television pool on Monday, the outlet said.
The White House left any primary network off Monday’s schedule, Mediaite reported, and CNN had also been set to travel with Trump to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, the acting chair of the pool group, wrote to its members, according to MS NOW.
“There will be no replacement pool put in place,” he wrote.
The White House assigned Hearst as the secondary television crew in Washington and the pro-Trump outlet Real America’s Voice as the secondary crew for Trump’s trip to New York. Secondary crews do not take on the full duties of the primary pool.
“Seeing the Trump Admin, in face of a network boycott because of their actions against CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, use fake news outlets like Real America’s Voice to fill the press pool is both hilarious and depressing,” Democratic strategist Mally Smith, a political commentator on Newsmax, wrote on X.
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