Donald Trump at a presidential campaign rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump had one thing on his mind on Wednesday after his first Cabinet meeting: how it would play on TV.
The meeting on Wednesday was attended by each of the Cabinet department leaders within the Trump administration (and Elon Musk). The president painted a picture of a decaying and broken America while speaking to reporters before seemingly thinking of cable news. At the event’s end, the president was caught making a peculiar request to Fox News‘ Lawrence Jones.
“Lawrence, say we did a great job, please,” Trump said, still seated between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “Say it was unbelievable.”
Jones, who Trump joked was “making a fortune” as a “Fox & Friends” co-host, had asked Trump a series of softball questions on the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and Trump’s picks to fill out his Cabinet during the meeting.
The plea to a friendly network comes as the Trump admin has made several moves to ice out publications over ideological differences. Trump restricted the Associated Press from White House events for issuing editorial guidelines on the Gulf of Mexico’s name. The outlet has since filed a lawsuit. The Department of Defense also announced plans to push many liberal-leaning outlets out of the Pentagon’s on-site media offices in favor of conservative publications.
All that pales to the Trump administration’s latest attack on the free press. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared that the administration would hand-pick which reporters and outlets were allowed to sit in on White House briefings. The move was widely condemned by reporters, including Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.
[The White House Correspondents’ Association] has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all those outlets have… in order to get the President’s message out to the largest possible audience, no matter the day or hour,” she wrote.