The White House on Monday removed a Wall Street Journal reporter from the president’s trip to Scotland this weekend, after the newspaper reported that the president signed a salacious letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday in 2003.
The bombshell report claimed Trump wrote a ‘bawdy’ 50th birthday card to Epstein, which concluded: ‘Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,’ and featured a hand-drawn image of a naked woman as well as his signature.
The report drew immediate condemnation from the White House as the president decried it as a ‘fake’ and berated the Journal for publishing the story.
The Journal’s reporters will no longer be able to travel with the president to Scotland as part of the regular pool rotation.
‘Due to the Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board,’ Leavitt said to Politico. Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump, and the White House has taken significant steps to include as many voices as possible.’
The news only adds to criticism of the president from the media, which protest the exclusion of reporters from the press pool.
The White House Correspondents’ Association condemned the decision as ‘deeply troubling.’
‘Government retaliation against news outlets based on the content of their reporting should concern all who value free speech and an independent media,’ WHCA president Weijia Jiang, a CBS News correspondent, said in a statement.
United States President Donald Trump points at a reporter in the Oval Office
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One
‘We strongly urge the White House to restore the Wall Street Journal to its previous position in the pool and aboard Air Force One for the President’s upcoming trip to Scotland,’ she added.
The president is traveling to Scotland on Friday for a five-day visit to Turnberry and Aberdeen, where he has pristine golf courses.
He will also meet with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss a trade deal with the United States.
Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch, calling the story ‘false, malicious, and defamatory.’
Trump is requesting a jury trial and is suing ‘for damages, punitive damages, court costs, and such other relief as the Court deems just and proper, not to be less than $10 billion dollars.’
But Trump’s lawsuit may face difficulty as it has landed in the courtroom of Darrin Gayles, a judge appointed to the court by former President Barack Obama.
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One for travel
Donald Trump is welcomed as he arrives at his Turnberry golf course, in Turnberry, Scotland
The Trump administration removed the Associated Press from the traveling press pool in February because the media group refused to adopt Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
The ban was part of a broader shift in press access, with the Trump administration centralizing control over the press pool – previously managed by the White House Correspondents’ Association.
AP access to restricted White House events remains blocked for now due to an appeals court’s ruling, with a final legal outcome still pending.
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