Trump Says He May Move the White House Press Corps Out of the Brady Briefing Room
President Trump said over the weekend that he is thinking about moving the White House press corps to a different location. He didn’t say where, or when. As of Oct 27 2026 the White House has named no destination and no date, and the people who would have to pack up their booths are working from a pair of Truth Social posts.
The posts came in two steps. On Saturday Oct 24 Trump denied a New York Times report from Oct 20 that he had talked about turning the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room back into an indoor swimming pool. The old pool, he wrote, would never be brought back. In the same post he said he may move the “Fake News” to a “less obnoxious location.” On Sunday he went further and said plainly that he was thinking about moving the press and putting them somewhere else, citing space the building needs.
The pool idea didn’t come from nowhere. On Sept 27 Trump himself posted side-by-side images captioned “Fake News Before” and “FDR Pool After.” White House communications director Steven Cheung said afterwards that all options remained on the table and that any announcement would come when appropriate. So the denial covers the pool. It doesn’t cover the move.
Why the room matters more than the podium
The briefing room sits on top of history most visitors never see. Franklin Roosevelt got an indoor pool in 1933, paid for by a fundraising drive the New York Daily News ran for a president with polio. In 1970 Richard Nixon had it floored over to make room for a press corps that television had made far bigger. The room took James Brady’s name in 2000, after the press secretary shot in the 1981 attempt on Ronald Reagan.
The thing reporters would lose in a move is distance. The wire, network and radio booths behind the briefing room are steps from the press secretary’s offices and from the West Wing. Reporters catch officials in hallways, check a quote in thirty seconds, and see who walks in. That proximity is the whole value of a White House credential. Put the press corps in another building and every one of those small contacts becomes an appointment.
One more step in a long squeeze
This would land on a press corps that has already given up a lot of ground in this administration. In February 2025 the White House took over choosing who rides in the press pool, a job the White House Correspondents’ Association had handled for decades. The Associated Press was shut out of pool spots after it kept using the name Gulf of Mexico. On Oct 31 2025 the White House barred reporters from the Upper Press area, where the press secretary works, unless they had an appointment.
Meanwhile the building keeps changing around them. The East Wing came down for a ballroom, with ground broken in October 2025, and the Supreme Court let construction go on while the legal fight continues. Space is a real constraint in an old house. It’s also the easiest argument to make for a decision that would mostly change who sees what.
What to watch
For bureau chiefs the practical questions come first. Who pays to move the booths and wiring, and would the new space still sit inside the security perimeter that gives reporters walking access to the West Wing? The WHCA is the body that would normally negotiate those terms. Its leverage has shrunk since it lost control of the pool.
For everyone else the test is simpler. Watch whether daily briefings keep happening in the room where they’ve been held since 1970, and whether the reporters who ask the hard questions keep their seats close to the people who have to answer them.
Pressclub.us follows the federal beat alongside CrossGov.com, and the earlier fight over Pentagon press workspaces is a useful precedent for how these moves play out.