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WASHINGTON — The White House press office has received 7,400 requests from people interested in occupying a newly announced briefing room seat for “new media,” The Post has confirmed.
The eye-popping flood came less than 24 hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s first briefing Tuesday afternoon, at which she announced the new 50th seat for journalists.
A White House official told The Post the press office is “excited about the interest” — though it’s not immediately clear how staffers will sift through the mountain of requests, the number of which was first reported by the Daily Wire.
Leavitt, 27, announced that the “new media” seat would be filled on a rotating basis by outlets and individuals who lack a permanent assignment to one of the 49 traditional media seats that are assigned by the White House Correspondents’ Association.
The seat is located to the right of the press secretary’s lectern and historically was occupied by a member of the press office’s staff.
At Leavitt’s inaugural briefing, the seat was filled by Axios executive editor Mike Allen, who asked the first question.
Allen was followed by Breitbart journalist Matt Boyle, whose outlet also lacks a permanent seat — though the new media slot also is expected to be filled by social media figures with significant followings.
A White House website form asks applicants to provide a link to their primary social account.
The creation of the new seat followed rumors that President Trump’s team would end deference to the Correspondents’ Association and entirely redo the seating chart.
The decision to add a new seat avoided a fight with journalists that threatened to distract from Trump’s ambitious early-term push for legislation and his rollout of executive orders.
Leavitt framed the decision as a way to boost representation — in addition to revoking a 2023 Biden White House policy that stripped journalists of permanent press passes if they lacked more stringent congressional press credentials.
“The Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media who are seated in this room, because according to recent polling from Gallup, Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record low,” Leavitt said at her first briefing.
“Millions of Americans, especially young people, have turned from traditional television outlets and newspapers to consume their news from podcasts, blogs, social media and other independent outlets. It’s essential to our team that we share President Trump’s message everywhere and adapt this White House to the new media landscape in 2025.”
Leavitt added that “this White House believes strongly in the First Amendment, so it’s why our team will work diligently to restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration.”
The new Trump press team has not yet divulged the fate of a Biden-era prescreening process that was used to bar major news outlets, including The Post, from large events that under past presidents were open to all journalists on campus.
That screening process initially was premised upon the COVID-19 pandemic but persisted throughout President Joe Biden’s four-year term — drawing press corps protests. It was widely understood as a way of shaping the variety of questions posed to Biden and sometimes resulted in journalists being refused entry due to “space limitations” despite as many as two dozen empty press seats.
