Trump: I won’t move press briefing room

by Rebecca Savransky - 01/18/17 8:30 AM ET

President-elect Donald Trump said his administration will not move the press briefing room.

“The press went crazy, so I said, ‘Let’s not move it.’ But some people in the press will not be able to get in,” Trump said on “Fox and Friends” in an interview that aired Wednesday.

“We have so many people that want to go in, so we’ll have to just have to pick the people to go into the room. I’m sure other people will be thrilled about that,” he said.

Trump said his administration offered a larger room for the press, but “they went crazy.”

{mosads}”And they’ll be begging for a much larger room very soon,” he said. “You watch.”

Trump’s team had reportedly been considering moving the press corps from the White House.

Instead, it was floated that the press would work out of the White House Conference Center, near Lafayette Square, or in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.

Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said there had been so much interest in covering the president-elect and questioned whether the current briefing room would have enough space.

Incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus said in an interview over the weekend that talk about barring the press from the White House was “getting way out of whack.”

He said the discussions had centered on moving the “initial press conferences” to the Executive Office Building.

“So no one is moving out of the White House,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “That is the White House, where you can fit four times the amount of people in the press conference, allowing more press, more coverage from all over the country to have those press conferences. That’s what we’re talking about.”

Priebus added on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the discussions are focused on “press briefings” as opposed to removing reporters from the White House.

“This is about quadrupling the amount of reporters who can cover our press conference,” Priebus said.

Tags Donald Trump