TV cameras go dark on Trump UN week as Zelensky meeting approaches
The White House television pool effectively went dark on Monday after four networks refused to participate in the rotation once President Trump blocked CNN from it, according to a WSJ Politics newsletter by The Wall Street Journal’s Washington coverage chief, Damian Paletta.
The newsletter, published Monday, reported that video of a ribbon-cutting for a new White House helipad streamed on the White House website showed Trump speaking to supporters, but no microphones were present to capture his remarks. The cameras’ absence stood in contrast to the network coverage of a Trump press conference with Mamdani later that afternoon, which aired live on CNN.
Mamdani said at the press conference that he told the president that all media outlets would be allowed to cover the event. Trump, waving his arm toward the cameras, said: “They said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me.” After it was announced that Trump would leave the press conference, he stayed and kept answering questions, the newsletter reported.
The pool rotation has historically captured consequential moments in the Oval Office. In February 2025, pool cameras broadcast a tense exchange between Trump, Vance and Zelensky that Trump previewed with the line, “This is going to be great television.” Paletta recalled other pool-captured moments, including President George W. Bush and White House chief of staff Andy Card at a school on Sept. 11, 2001.
Trump is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning, and throughout the day he is set to meet with U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Zelensky and Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, according to the newsletter. Paletta noted the particular irony that one of the first meetings the cameras would miss is between Trump and Zelensky, given the history of that relationship being shaped by televised encounters. The newsletter also noted Trump’s coming summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Six weeks before the midterm elections — with high gas prices, uncertainty in the Middle East and the ongoing war in Ukraine — Trump “has lost one of his primary windows to voters, business leaders and his foreign counterparts,” Paletta wrote.
The newsletter also reported that housing chief Bill Pulte examined Attorney General Todd Blanche’s mortgages. The check came as Pulte was examining the mortgages of Trump’s adversaries. Some officials thought Pulte had been trying to collect information on Blanche, then No. 2 at the DOJ, and others to pressure them to more quickly pursue investigations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Separately, Republican candidates in tight races are calling for an export ban on diesel, according to the newsletter. They are running out of time to calm voters angry about rising fuel costs, setting off a scramble on an issue many see as the GOP’s biggest political liability in the midterms. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R., Iowa), who is locked in a close race with Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek for an open Senate seat in Iowa, argued that Iowans “shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran.”
The newsletter also reported that Trump has repeatedly discussed kicking the entire press corps out of the White House, raising the matter as recently as last month as his frustrations with media coverage grew, according to current and former administration officials. Some advisers have cautioned against the move, and a senior administration official told the Journal that the president had no plans to banish the press from the White House.