‘It’s a Joke’: New Report Details Plight of Reporters Who Get Screamed at by Trump on White House Lawn

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Esquire politics editor Jack Holmes detailed the plight of the White House press pool in the era of President Donald Trump as part of a lengthy feature piece out Tuesday.

Holmes’ piece focused primarily on Trump’s raucous Q&A sessions with reporters on the White House lawn, dubbed in the piece as “ChopperTalk.” The Esquire story describes in visceral detail the ritual abuse reporters at the top of their field go through as Trump traipses by, under the blare of Marine One, and occasionally shouts things at them.

“The White House press are people who have reached what has traditionally been viewed as the pinnacle of American political journalism, waiting—and jostling—to ask the president a question no one can hear over the deafening hum of Marine One, only for him to yell about whatever the hell he wants and ignore attempts at a follow-up question,” Holmes wrote.

“The prevailing sentiment from White House journalists is that it is horrible. It’s bad in the winter, like in [Brian] Karem’s horror story, but some told me it’s worse in the summer heat. You’re packed into a rugby scrum, waiting and sweating, the D.C. swamp heat beginning to set into your every pore,” he continued, adding that Trump “tends to favor people he recognizes from the television screen.”

One White House reporter who has mostly stopped attending ChopperTalk described it to Holmes as “faux access,” adding, “It’s a joke.”

“You haven’t lived until you’ve been crammed with 175 people into a space meant for 25,” said Playboy White House correspondent Brian Karem.

According to the report, the president has also started to arrive considerably late, leaving journalists out in the cold. In one incident described by Karem, reporters had to shelter from an artificial snow storm caused by the president’s helicopter on a winter day.

“It was chaos as everyone tried to shelter themselves from the storm, and that was before the president disembarked and walked right by the scrum, headed straight to the West Wing,” Holmes detailed. “At that point, all hell broke loose. People made a run for it trying to catch the president before he got inside. Some people fell.”

Karem told Esquire he leapt over the scrum and managed to get a question in. Trump didn’t answer it.

Read the story here.