President Trump floated converting the White House press briefing room back into a swimming pool, a jab at media outlets locked in a fight over access to the grounds.
President Trump needled the press corps Sunday by suggesting the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room could return to its original use as an indoor swimming pool, complete with before-and-after images he posted on Truth Social showing the space as a gold-adorned pool.
The New York Post reported the move came amid an ongoing access dispute in which the White House has pushed to keep reporters from CNN, MS Now, and Politico off the grounds, and after five major television networks temporarily stepped back from pool coverage.
The pool structure still sits under the briefing room floor. Franklin D. Roosevelt had it built in 1933 while battling polio. Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used it often. Richard Nixon later ordered flooring installed so the space could serve as a briefing room. It was eventually renamed for James Brady, the Reagan press secretary severely wounded in John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt. Gerald Ford later added the outdoor pool still used today.
Trump has made no secret of his view that the press should not get an easy ride inside the building. Last year, when a reporter asked about renovating the briefing room, he shut the idea down.
"I don’t want to do that,"
he said, then added:
"I don’t want you to be comfortable,"
and
"No, I don’t want to make life comfortable."
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to restore access for CNN, MS Now, and Politico for at least the next two weeks while litigation continues. That order landed after the administration’s push to bar those outlets from the grounds.
Earlier last week, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC at least temporarily stopped taking part in the White House pool. The walkout created snags capturing video of the president. Trump’s Sunday post landed against that backdrop.
The briefing-room taunt also fits a broader renovation push during his second term. Trump has remodeled the Palm Room, the colonnade, and the North Portico. He has touted a $400 million ballroom project, unveiled a new granite helipad on the South Lawn, and eyed other District projects that include restoring fountains, covering statues near the Lincoln Memorial in 23K gold, and renovating the Reflecting Pool.
Access fights have already played out beyond the briefing room itself, including when the White House locked CNN out of Air Force One for a Knoxville football trip.
The Sunday pool suggestion sits inside a larger shift in how the White House manages who gets close to the president. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the White House press team, not the White House Correspondents’ Association, will now determine the presidential press pool.
"For decades, a group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States in these most intimate spaces,"
Leavitt said. “Not anymore.” She added that going forward “the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team.” Major networks keep rotation slots while new media and streaming outlets gain seats in the Brady room.
WHCA president Eugene Daniels objected, arguing the change “suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president” and that “in a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.” Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt took the opposite view, writing that Trump is “breaking the guild” and that most alternative media of the center-left and center-right “are not unhappy at all with the new developments,” Fox News noted in its coverage of the pool overhaul.
Similar access limits have drawn historical comparisons, including when Clinton admitted he wanted White House press bans even while criticizing Trump over outlet access.
Trump’s Truth Social post did not lay out blueprints or a construction timeline. It showed the briefing room transformed into a gold-adorned indoor pool and left the message clear enough: the space exists because presidents once used it that way, and the current arrangement is not sacred.
The same administration has already narrowed travel access in other settings, as when the White House barred CNN from Air Force One for a Tennessee football trip. The pattern is consistent. Privileges once treated as permanent are now treated as conditional.
Trump’s broader second-term agenda has also featured sharp cuts to programs he views as wasteful, including when he canceled nearly $1 billion in migrant and DEI funding through a year-end rescission. The press-access fight follows the same logic of reclaiming control from entrenched players.
The Brady room still sits atop FDR’s pool. Nixon covered it. Trump is reminding everyone the cover is not permanent and that comfort for the press was never the point.
Taxpayers built the house. The press does not own the floorboards, and a president willing to say so out loud is long overdue.