Attorney General Todd Blanche inadvertently revealed that the White House preselects reporters to ask questions during press conferences, despite Donald Trump condemning Joe Biden for the practice.
Blanche stepped in as White House press secretary on Tuesday—a role that remains unfilled following the departure of Karoline Leavitt—to speak to reporters outside in the Rose Garden.
After discussing the work of the Department of Justice, Blanche opened the floor to questions while acknowledging that he knew exactly which reporters he would call on, and in what order.
“I will take questions if there are any. And I know it’s a different environment than before; I notice you guys are sweating, which is nice. I love to see that. We’ll start out with…”
Multiple reporters then began talking over one another as they tried to get the opening question, prompting Blanche to tell them: “They give you a list, guys. Everybody calm down.”
Blanche then took the first question from a reporter from the conservative magazine National Review, as planned.
He also glanced at his list to call on a reporter from the right-wing news site Daily Caller.
The first two questions taken by Blanche on Tuesday gave the attorney general the opportunity to push Trump’s agenda. The first question from National Review asked whether the Supreme Court’s rejection of Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail ahead of the midterms will create an “obstacle to future ballot fraud prosecution.”
The second question from the Daily Caller asked if the administration would deport Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar if the longtime Trump nemesis was proven to have committed “immigration or naturalization fraud” in an investigation announced by White House border czar Tom Homan on Sunday.
Administration officials deciding in advance which reporters to call on at press conferences is a common practice.
However, Blanche’s openness about it only serves to highlight Trump’s hypocrisy, since he called out his predecessor for doing the same thing.
“Biden calls on a specific reporter, gets a question, then reads the answer off a card. In other words, he knows the question, then reads the answer,” Trump posted on Truth Social in November 2023. “What is going on here?”
During Trump’s first term, he also accused Biden of being given questions in advance at a press conference in Wilmington, Delaware.
“Biden was asked questions at his so-called Press Conference yesterday where he read the answers from a teleprompter,” Trump posted on X in July 2020. “That means he was given the questions, just like Crooked Hillary. Never have seen this before!”
A Biden adviser told the Daily Beast at the time that Trump’s claim was “laughable.”
The Washington Post noted that Biden had admitted at times that he had a “list of 10 people that I’m supposed to call on” while speaking to the press, but the White House Correspondents’ Association and major outlets, such as the Associated Press, denied that reporters provided their questions in advance.
When Vice President JD Vance filled in as press secretary on Sept. 3, he held up a chart showing where each reporter would be sitting in the White House press room, allowing him to know where to look when taking their questions.
In August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also used a list to call on specific reporters for questions. However, one person Bessent called on was not in the room, leaving him standing in awkward silence for several seconds before he moved on to someone else.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
