The New York Times is in a tizzy over Trump’s reported desire to restore the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room to what was its original purpose: a swimming pool. The Times could barely contain their outrage with their headline Tuesday:

Trump Pushes to Evict the Press From the White House

Oh nos! Evicted. The horror!

It’s a threat to Democracy, you see:

Mr. Trump has told aides he would prefer to bring back the indoor pool President Franklin D. Roosevelt added in 1933 as therapy for his polio-afflicted legs; President Richard Nixon later covered it over to make room for the news media. Journalists who are credentialed to cover the White House work out of a small office space connected to the press briefing room.

While moving the media out of the White House may be a relatively small debate considering Mr. Trump’s attacks on journalists more broadly, it would be highly symbolic. The proximity of the media to the seat of U.S. executive power has long been an acknowledgment of the importance of a free press in a constitutional democracy.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung isn’t impressed by the legacy media’s howling and said they basically brought this on themselves:

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The swimming pool structure still exists after Nixon had it covered up to create the briefing room in 1970, but the White House maintains the outdoor pool that was installed in 1975 under former President Gerald Ford, an avid swimmer. There was a little pushback at the time from the media until it was made clear that Ford's pool was privately financed, and then it became pretty much a non-issue.

Nowadays, if Trump picks a flower on WH grounds, it’s likely to cause a five-alarm media fire.

The president has long had the idea to move journalists to somewhere like the Eisenhower Building, but thus far he has not followed through. (See: Yes, This Is Actually Real – Leftists Stop Trump From Power-Washing Ugly Eisenhower Exec. Office Bldg.)

The knickers-in-a-twist Times reports it as a bad thing that the president has now surrounded himself with staff that actually shares his policy visions:

What has changed since Mr. Trump’s first term or even earlier this term is the staff around him. The president’s core team has shrunk from the already-tight unit that he brought into the White House last year. During earlier discussions, most of Mr. Trump’s senior aides agreed it served him better to keep the media nearby. But Mr. Trump has grown more enraged about his press coverage, and other advisers of growing influence have encouraged him to take drastic measures to punish journalists.

However, there are actually practical reasons for moving out of the antiquated Brady Room: it’s small, and the administration has worked on allowing access to a more diverse group of outlets (meaning not so heavily dominated by the leftist legacy media). The place is quite simply getting cramped. 

It could also be aimed at further sidelining the White House Correspondents Association, which has long lorded over the Brady Room. That grip loosened in February 2025 when Trump and then-Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took control of selecting outlets for the presidential press pool.

Will Trump make the move and freak out the media even more, or is he just trolling them? Either one works for me.