President Donald Trump berated Fox News star Jacqui Heinrich in a Truth Social post this afternoon, calling the Emmy-winning reporter “absolutely terrible” and suggesting that this was not a surprise given that “she’s a fan of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA).”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently announced that the White House, not the WHCA, will start to dictate who can join the press pool and get firsthand access to the President.
Leavitt claimed the change disrupts a status quo that is too insular, wherein the WHCA has long “dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the President of the United States in these most intimate spaces.”
[This arrangement, where the press itself — conservative-leaning and liberal-leaning media both — decides how it will operate, rather than having those rights bestowed by the executive branch, is a long tradition meant to preserve media independence and help ensure government transparency.]
Based on the president’s post, Trump’s ire was stirred at least in part by Heinrich’s defense of journalistic independence that the WHCA represents. As she wrote: “This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House. The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps.” (Heinrich sits on the WHCA board.)
This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House. The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps.
WHCA has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all… https://t.co/GeGrckDYVt
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) February 25, 2025
But drawing Trump’s ire first was likely Heinrich questioning Leavitt about the legality of the president’s deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, noting that conservative lawyer and pundit Andy McCarthy, who “agrees with what the president is trying to do with the Alien Enemies Act,” is nevertheless “not sure that the law is completely on [Trump’s] side.”
Fox’s @JacquiHeinrich: “One more on TdA. Andy McCarthy said in an interview with Hugh Hewitt. He certainly agrees with what the president is trying to do with the Alien Enemies Act, but he’s not sure that the law is completely on his side. He cites some previous Supreme Court… pic.twitter.com/WEBEJ2Eldz
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 19, 2025
Below is likely one of the exchanges where Trump found Heinrich “absolutely terrible,” as those doubting the legal legitimacy of Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act — unused since WWII when it was the justification for Japanese internment camps — are characterized as unpatriotic by the administration. Trump himself called for the impeachment of the judge who ordered a pause on the deportations, calling Judge Boasberg a “radical left lunatic.”
On the WHCA issue, the independence of the press is meant to prevent propaganda from becoming indistinguishable from news. The challenges of a White House policing which media outlets have “intimate” access, as Leavitt describes it, are evident in a recent story about a Trump PAC allegedly helping fund Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) — where Brian Glenn, a pro-Trump reporter who recently drew global attention for asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky why he wasn’t wearing a suit at the White House, was a prominent figure.