Trump Says He May Move the White House Press Corps, and Denies a Plan to Restore a Swimming Pool

President Donald Trump has confirmed that he may move the White House press corps to a different location, Reuters reported on Saturday, in the latest turn in his administration's running dispute with the news media covering it.

"I may move the Fake News to a less obnoxious location," Trump said in a social media post, according to Reuters. In a follow-up account published Monday by LaPresse, he was quoted writing: "I am thinking about moving the Press Briefing Room to another location, but I will use that space for the urgent needs of journalists."

Trump dismissed a report that he planned to remove the press room and restore a historic swimming pool on the site, saying he had never "even thought to do such a stupid thing," and, in the LaPresse account, "I am not building a swimming pool in the White House Press Briefing Room, and I never intended to do so." The New York Times had reported that Trump urged then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt in August to move news conferences out of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, an idea that was never implemented; according to that report, he would rather have had the indoor therapy pool installed at the site during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, which the Nixon administration later replaced with the briefing room.

The relocation talk follows a direct restriction last month. Reuters reported that Trump briefly banned journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds, that free speech advocates said the move violated First Amendment protections, and that the White House reinstated their access after a federal judge deemed the ban likely unconstitutional — a case the administration is still contesting. LaPresse reported on Monday that the administration has repeatedly attempted to restrict press access at the White House and the Pentagon, most recently with the removal of Andrew Feinberg of The Independent from his White House accreditation after he confronted the president in the Oval Office.

No new location for the press corps has been announced, and the briefing room remains in place. The Politics Desk will follow any formal announcement; any move would be a national story for every station in this network, Austin included.