President Donald Trump on Sunday doubted the idea that the Pentagon could limit what reporters cover when it comes to the nation’s defense.
Speaking briefly as he prepared to head to Arizona to speak at a memorial for Charlie Kirk, Trump was asked: “Should the Pentagon be part of deciding what reporters can report on?”
“No, I don’t think so,” the president said. “Nothing stops reporters.”
On Friday, the Pentagon announced that reporters who cover the Defense Department would only be allowed to do so if they pledged to limit what they report. “Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified,” the policy stated. “Failure to abide by these rules may result in suspension or revocation of your building pass and loss of access.”
“The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X on Friday.
The restrictions drew widespread condemnation from members of the press, past and present.
“This is a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most: the U.S. military,” Mike Balsamo, president of the National Press Club, said in a statement.
On Facebook, two-time Pulitzer-winning reporter Bill Marimow wrote: “Under Pete Hegseth’s new rules, journalists would have had their press credentials canceled for reporting the Johnson Administration’s lies during the Vietnam War; for John Hersey’s groundbreaking New Yorker report about the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; the stories about JFK’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison; and countless other stories of importance.”
It was in no way clear from Trump’s brief remarks whether his statement was meant to be anything more than a personal observation on the matter.
In other remarks Sunday, the president predicted that Attorney General Pam Bondi would come to be regarded as “one of the best attorney generals of the ages” and said that New York Attorney General Letitia James “looks very guilty.”
Trump also said he would consider helping defend Poland and the Baltic states, NATO allies in Eastern Europe, if Russia continues to rattle its sabers in that direction.
“Yeah, I would. I would,” he said.
