President Donald Trump wants the White House press corps out of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room — and he has a specific replacement in mind: an indoor swimming pool.
According to reporting from The New York Times by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the president raised the idea during one of his final meetings with then-Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt before her departure in August, telling her it would be her "last legacy" to remove reporters from the briefing room. The idea did not move forward at the time, but the Times reports it was not the first time Trump had floated it during his second term.
Per the Times, Trump has told aides he hopes to restore the indoor pool built by President Franklin D. Roosevelt — a facility that existed until President Richard Nixon converted it into the press briefing room in 1970. The reporting suggests the press corps could be relocated to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
The Wall Street Journal reported similarly last month, claiming Trump had "repeatedly" weighed moving the entire press corps out of the White House, though a senior official at the time said the president had no plans to do so.
White House Won't Deny It
White House spokesman Steven Cheung did not deny the reporting when asked, according to TheWrap. His comments coincided with the Times report going public — a non-denial that has fueled speculation the idea is more than a passing thought.
The pool itself is no myth. FDR had it built in 1939 for physical therapy, and it served as a presidential amenity until Nixon's 1970 renovation turned the space into what became the Brady Briefing Room. Restoring it would mean relocating the daily press briefing — and the reporters who attend it — entirely out of the West Wing.
Timing Raises Eyebrows
The report lands as the White House press secretary's office sits vacant following Leavitt's August departure, and as tensions between the administration and the press corps have escalated.
Just last week, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly barred the administration from reinstating a ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters accessing White House grounds. And on Tuesday, Trump warned White House reporter Andrew Feinberg to "be careful" during a tense exchange in the Oval Office.
The president's relationship with the legacy media has been strained since his first term and has not improved in his second. The pool proposal, whether serious or not, fits a pattern: Trump has long questioned why the White House devotes prime real estate to reporters he considers hostile.
What It Would Take
Moving the press corps out of the West Wing would be a logistical and institutional undertaking. The Brady Briefing Room is wired for broadcast, and the White House Correspondents' Association has occupied that space for more than five decades. Relocating to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — a separate structure on the White House complex — would keep reporters on campus but remove them from the immediate orbit of the Oval Office.
It is not yet known whether the administration has ordered any formal planning, sought cost estimates, or set a timeline. A representative for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.
What is known: the president has raised the idea more than once, told his former press secretary to make it her legacy, and the White House has declined to knock it down.
Our Take
Let's be honest about what this is. The Brady Briefing Room is not a sacred temple of democracy — it's a converted swimming pool that Nixon paved over so reporters could have a stage. Trump knows the history, and he knows exactly what he's doing by bringing it up.
The legacy media has spent years treating the briefing room as their own territory, a place where they perform for the cameras and lecture the American people. The idea that the president might hand that room back to its original purpose — and send the press corps down the hall to the Eisenhower Building — is a message wrapped in a renovation project. The White House belongs to the people, not to the correspondents' association.
Is Trump serious? Maybe. Maybe he just enjoys watching the press corps sweat. Either way, the non-denial from the White House says more than any official statement could. Patriots should watch this one closely — if the briefing room goes back to being a pool, it will be the clearest sign yet that this administration answers to We the People, not to the people asking the questions.
