White House pulls The Independent’s reporter from Trump’s Iowa trip a day after an Oval Office clash

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — The White House has removed a reporter for The Independent from the small press pool traveling with President Donald Trump to a campaign rally in Iowa on Thursday, a day after Trump berated the reporter in the Oval Office. The White House Correspondents’ Association called the move “retaliation.”

Andrew Feinberg, The Independent’s White House correspondent, was told by the White House press office on Wednesday evening that he would “not be the print pooler on tomorrow’s trip,” even though his turn in the rotation had been confirmed days earlier, The Independent reported. Trump is scheduled to appear in Sioux City for Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn and other Iowa Republicans.

The print pooler rides on Air Force One and files reports that the rest of the press corps relies on. Since February 2025, the White House press office, not the correspondents’ association, has decided which outlets fill those seats, Reuters reported at the time.

What happened in the Oval Office

On Tuesday, Trump told Feinberg to “be careful” after the reporter tried to ask questions the president did not like, called him a “sick person” and said, “I actually think there’s something wrong with you,” according to The Independent. An official White House rapid-response account on X then called Feinberg a “Mongoloid Moron,” and Vice President JD Vance, on his official X account, called him an “imbecile,” the paper reported.

In a statement Wednesday evening, the association said it “strongly objects to the decision to restrict a journalist’s coverage simply because the president didn’t care for their questioning. That is retaliation.” It added that “the American public’s right to an independent press depends on reporters being able to do their jobs without fear that challenging the president will cut off their access.” The association’s president, Jacqui Heinrich, is a Fox News correspondent.

The White House has previously told The Independent that traveling on Air Force One is a “privilege not a right” and has called Trump “the most accessible President in American history.”

A court fight over the hard passes, and a gap for the plane

The Independent said it is at least the third outlet removed from Air Force One in recent weeks. The dispute grows out of Trump’s decision in September to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House access. After the outlets sued, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order on Sept. 24 and a preliminary injunction on Oct. 14 requiring the administration to restore their reporters’ press passes, Nieman Reports noted. Kelly, a Trump appointee, found that the president’s own public statements showed the outlets were targeted for their coverage. “Simply put, that is unlawful viewpoint discrimination,” he wrote, according to The Independent. CNN reported the ruling found the bans likely violated the First Amendment. The administration appealed within a day.

The administration has drawn a line between the White House grounds, where the court order applies, and the Oval Office and Air Force One. White House communications director Steven Cheung has said restoring passes is “different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One,” The Independent reported, and reporters from CNN and Politico have continued to be kept off the plane on days their outlets were assigned to the pool.

That distinction rests on a June 2025 ruling by a federal appeals court panel in the Associated Press’s separate lawsuit, which let the White House keep the AP out of the Oval Office and Air Force One while the case continues. Judge Neomi Rao wrote that in those limited spaces “the White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted,” according to Nieman Reports. Older D.C. cases, beginning with Sherrill v. Knight in 1977, require notice and a reason before the White House revokes a reporter’s credential, and judges relied on them to restore passes to CNN’s Jim Acosta in 2018 and Playboy’s Brian Karem in 2019.

CNN is pressing the same point. In a letter to the Justice Department and White House counsel Will Scharf, CNN’s lawyer, Ted Boutrous, said the network had been kept from “fully performing” its duties as designated pooler at least four times without written notice or an explanation, and that CNN would go back to court if the problems continued, NBC News reported. A White House official told NBC that “no person and no journalist has a constitutional right to access to the president’s Oval Office, Air Force One, or other sensitive and private facilities.”

The legal question in Feinberg’s case is narrower than in the CNN case: he keeps his White House pass and lost one pool assignment. Whether the White House may pick pool reporters for the plane based on their questions is the question at the center of the APis the issue the AP appeal is expected to settle.#8217;s continuing case.

The Inquisitor sent requests for comment Thursday morning to the White House press office; the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; the Freedom of the Press Foundation; and the Society of Professional Journalists. The Knight First Amendment Institute said before publication that its lawyers were not available before the story ran but that it hoped to comment afterward. The others had not responded by publication. The Inquisitor could not find a published email address for the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Update, Oct. 22, 2026: This story has been updated to reflect a response from the Knight First Amendment Institute.

Photo: The two VC-25 aircraft that fly as Air Force One, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., in 2024. The White House / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.