It could be a landmark moment in U.S.-China relations: the arrival on Wednesday evening of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, in the United States, where he will be greeted by President Trump at Joint Base Andrews.
But because of Mr. Trump’s continuing standoff with the White House press corps, no major network camera will be there to capture the proceedings.
Since Monday, the networks that operate the White House TV pool — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC — have not filmed Mr. Trump’s public events as an act of solidarity with CNN, whose journalists, along with MS NOW’s and Politico’s, have been barred by the Trump administration. The network pool remained suspended on Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington heard arguments in a lawsuit filed by the three outlets to restore their access to the White House. He did not issue a ruling from the bench, but said he intended to rule as soon as possible.
Smaller networks are free to bring cameras to Mr. Xi’s arrival if they wish. On Tuesday, for example, many outlets relied on a feed from United Nations TV to provide coverage of a speech from Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, LindellTV, a fledgling digital news site founded by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, was listed on the White House’s public schedule as a secondary TV crew that might be on-hand.
But the network pool has the ability of producing high-quality footage of the president and distributing it to media outlets around the world.
On Thursday, the president has a full day of high-stakes meetings with Mr. Xi. Usually, footage of a high-stakes summit of two global leaders would be scrutinized for every minute aspect of the leaders’ body language and interactions.
It remained unclear if Mr. Trump’s ban would still be in effect on Thursday, and how that might affect the networks’ coverage plans for the day’s events.
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