WASHINGTON—President Trump wants a little gratitude.
The president has objected in public and private to media coverage of his presidency for months. Hours later, Trump banned the network and two other news organizations from the White House. One senior administration official reacted with exasperation to the decision, arguing that the move would do little to achieve the president’s goal of improving press coverage. But aides have convinced him to take less aggressive measures, such as blocking reporters from the Oval Office or limiting their participation in the pool of reporters that covers the president when he conducts events in spaces that are too small for the entire press corps. Trump and his team are looking for wins.
At a recent closed-door meeting in the Oval Office, the president expressed deep frustration to advisers that prominent figures in Washington hadn’t publicly thanked him for trying to overhaul the Kennedy Center, according to a senior administration official. Twenty months into his second term, Trump isn’t getting his way—and he isn’t happy about it, according to advisers, administration officials and others close to the president. Behind the scenes, the president has told aides he doesn’t have enough political allies defending him on television and making the case for his second-term achievements, according to people familiar with the matter. White House spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump’s allies have “done an incredible job of getting the message out to voters. Trump’s decision to ban MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House caught many White House officials by surprise, according to people familiar with the matter. A White House official said senior staff were with the president when he made the decision to ban the outlets. The president has discussed banning news outlets from the White House before, according to people close to the White House. In August, the president asked his advisers to look for more foreign policy victories that he could tout ahead of the midterms, according to U.S. officials.
But his frustrations reached a fever pitch on Friday, when one of his closest aides, Natalie Harp, showed him clips of anchors on the cable network MS NOW criticizing his administration, according to people familiar with the matter. The president’s frustrations mounted in the past week as two key advisers were away: White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was in Florida, where on Wednesday she announced that she is cancer-free , and press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently left the White House. But the president’s aides moved quickly to implement their boss’s directive, barring the outlets’ reporters from entering the White House on Saturday. On Friday, Trump announced that the U.S. and Denmark had reached an agreement that allows for more American forces in Greenland.
