President Trump is floating a new use for the White House briefing room: bring back the swimming pool that was there before the reporters moved in.

On Sunday, he shared a graphic contrasting the familiar rows of press seats with a swimming pool, turning a real piece of White House history into another jab at the media.

The labels leave little doubt about the joke: “Before” and “Fake News” on one side, “After” and “FDR Pool” on the other.

Here is the side-by-side image at the center of it:

The Gateway Pundit reports that President Trump posted the comparison on Truth Social on Sunday, suggesting the White House briefing room could give way to a restoration of Roosevelt’s indoor swimming pool. The report places the post amid his continuing fight with major news organizations over access to the White House and the traveling press pool.

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Earlier this month, President Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, before a judge subsequently ordered their access restored. The dispute continued over Saturday’s trip to Tennessee, with CNN excluded from the flight and Real America’s Voice providing pool coverage.

Sunday’s image takes that argument in a different direction. Instead of debating who gets a seat, President Trump is teasing a future without the seats themselves.

The post does not establish an approved renovation project, a construction schedule or a decision to relocate briefings. For now, it is a provocative suggestion with an unusually literal historical foundation.

There really was a swimming pool beneath the room where White House reporters now ask their questions.

The White House Historical Association explains that the indoor pool was built for Roosevelt in 1933, with a newspaper fundraising drive collecting more than $12,000 for the project. Swimming was an important form of exercise following his polio diagnosis, and he first used the pool on June 2 of that year.

Several later presidents also swam there, before President Richard Nixon’s administration covered it with a floor in 1970 to provide more space for the growing White House press corps. The project architect later recalled instructions to preserve the pool so it could potentially be restored.

President Gerald Ford considered uncovering it, but ultimately left the press room in place and had a separate outdoor pool built with private funding in 1975. The two pools are distinct, and President Trump’s post invokes the older indoor one.

That history gives the joke its bite. The press briefing room is a conversion of an earlier presidential facility, and the idea of reversing that conversion has come up before.

Meanwhile, the fight over the other kind of White House “pool” is continuing in public.

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Real America’s Voice said Sunday that its footage was available, unedited, for other outlets to use:

That statement comes from the outlet supplying the coverage. Its participation gives conservative media a direct role in documenting presidential travel, a job traditionally shared among the larger television networks.

For audiences who have wanted a broader range of reporters near the president, that is a welcome development. Access to the footage and the freedom to scrutinize the administration both matter; neither requires treating the biggest networks as the only people capable of doing the job.

The administration also defended its position on Sunday. In a clip shared by Rapid Response 47, Attorney General Todd Blanche argued that President Trump was frustrated with inaccurate coverage and described White House access as a privilege:

That is the administration’s argument in an ongoing dispute, and the court-ordered restoration of access remains part of the story.

President Trump’s pool post adds his familiar sense of humor to the clash. After days of arguments about who should cover him, he has offered the press corps a picture of what its workspace might look like with water instead of chairs.

Whether the suggestion ever goes beyond a post remains to be seen. But the historical twist is real: long before the briefing room became a daily television backdrop, that space belonged to FDR’s swimming pool.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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