{"id":1065,"date":"2026-07-24T12:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1065"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:09:14","slug":"the-white-house-press-corps-in-the-second-trump-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1065","title":{"rendered":"The White House Press Corps in the Second Trump Era"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>In one of Kent Nishimura\u2019s photographs of the White House press corps, which <em>The New Yorker<\/em> commissioned, the correspondent Beni Harmony readies herself for a segment featuring the President and the First Lady. She\u2019s covering a 2025 Halloween event; her face, which is illuminated by an unseen source, has a waxy, flashlight-under-the-chin quality. The Washington Monument rises flimsily in the background, visually echoing a rickety ladder on which a photographer perches, wearing an uncertain expression as he looks in the same direction as Harmony. The image could be a still from a film about an alien invasion, although the ominous light almost makes the figures seem like cinemagoers transfixed by something unsettling playing out onscreen. The poet Rosemary Tonks once described movie theatres as places \u201cwhere the criminal shadow-literature flickers over our faces.\u201d Harmony\u2019s features appear to have been darkly ignited by the Trump Show.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1063\">The Kinky Comedy of \u201cI Want Your Sex\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Nishimura, now a staff photographer with Agence France-Presse, has been documenting American news and politics for more than a decade. He started reporting on the White House at the tail end of Trump\u2019s first Administration and stayed on through the Biden Presidency. Before what journalists often refer to as Trump 1.0, he told me, New York was considered the center of the journalistic world. The landscape shifted when a genius of attention-capture broke out of reality television and into a different type of celebrity. Between 2017 and 2021, outlets ramped up their White House coverage and freelance photographers poured into D.C. When Trump was re\u00eblected, Nishimura said, \u201cI was fascinated to see if that would happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>But the second Trump Administration hasn\u2019t led to more chroniclers so much as different ones. The White House press corps, the conduit that routes and shapes the official government narrative, has itself been reshaped, its composition altered to better reflect the President\u2019s preferences. Since 2024, the body\u2019s ranks have swelled to include a number of podcasters, Substackers, and other independent creators, along with right-wing outfits such as Turning Point USA, Breitbart, and Newsmax.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>In another of Nishimura\u2019s photographs, CNN\u2019s chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins glances warily in the direction of Brian Glenn, a former White House correspondent for the conservative streaming network Real America\u2019s Voice. Glenn, the fianc\u00e9 of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, is turning toward something beyond the frame. The image of Collins is in focus, and her delicate features seem lined with suspicion, whereas Glenn\u2019s form is out of focus, giving him an evasive aura. Despite the contrast between the journalists, the symmetry of their gazes is striking: both are looking slightly over their shoulders. Are they scanning the recent past or the near future?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>The press corps aren\u2019t allotted much space in the White House. They are allowed to congregate in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, with its jam-packed rows of theatre-style seats facing the podium; in the area just outside the briefing room; on the driveway to the West Wing; and on \u201cPebble Beach,\u201d a stretch of the North Lawn dotted with tents, for live shots, that glow eerily at night. \u201cI had to get creative,\u201d Nishimura told me. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of visual variety.\u201d He said that his decision to shoot in black-and-white stemmed from a desire to strip away distraction, the coin of the realm in television: \u201cBecause TV relies not only on light but on color, on-air talent dress very nicely, with beautiful colors.\u201d He wanted \u201cto take it down to the bare essence of what is happening,\u201d letting \u201cthe people and the moments and the images themselves do the heavy lifting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1061\">Should We Do More to Fight Lookism?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>There\u2019s no politics without stagecraft, and the photographs reveal the backstage labor that allows the show to go on. Nishimura said that he hoped to capture \u201cslices of life in between scripted moments.\u201d This meant moving outside of the traditional tableau of White House photojournalism\u2014an orator on a pedestal\u2014to show members of the press in postures of alertness or repose. In one shot, the correspondents Nancy Cordes, Aishah Hasnie, and Garrett Haake attend a briefing. Cordes and Haake are keen and tense, their hands raised, but Hasnie has relaxed, withdrawing briefly into her thoughts. It\u2019s a glimpse of the performance paused, of the body as something to be inhabited rather than used or displayed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Photography subjects can be self-conscious, but, for the most part, the subjects of Nishimura\u2019s portfolio weren\u2019t. As he pointed out, White House reporters are used to being surveilled. The shots are busy with equipment\u2014boom mikes, bulb-flashes, wires and cables dripping like innards or snakes, the hungry Cyclopean eye of a mounted camera. Elsewhere, we see a shadow bifurcating the side of the White House; a taloned and bejewelled hand shooting up prayerfully; Trump either emerging from or disappearing behind a sliding door. These images, like those of the production gear, register as metaphors, even as they help to deliver the particular texture of a scene. In one snap, the President, viewed from above, points his finger crossly, as if scolding a scrum of unruly children. \u201cThere\u2019s always a difference between what politicians say publicly and what they might feel privately,\u201d Nishimura said. With Trump, though, \u201cit does feel like he\u2019s very candid.\u201d A different type of honesty pervades a frame of press secretary Karoline Leavitt adjusting her hair before an interview, or one of heavily made-up television reporters exchanging quiet words.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s something powerful\u2014and, yes, stripped down\u2014about seeing these politicians and newscasters without being able to hear their language. Nishimura\u2019s compositions offer truthful portraits of artifice. The photographs themselves demonstrate the journalistic art of eliciting the truth; in that way, they honor it.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1059\">The Complications of Graham Platner\u2019s Veteran Identity<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katy Waldman writes about Kent Nishimura\u2019s photographs, which capture the backstage labor that allows the Trump show to go on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photo-booth"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The White House Press Corps in the Second Trump Era - 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