Trump bars U.S. media from White House meeting, but lets in Russian photographers
UPDATE: May 11, 2017, 8:48 a.m. EDT CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta reports that the White House feels tricked by the Russians.
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Why deal with that pesky, fake-news U.S. media when you have friendlier options available?
U.S. President Donald Trump held a meeting on Wednesday with two Russian government representatives, just a day after he fired the head of the FBI. The same FBI that was leading the investigation into the Trump campaign and administration's connections to Russia.
As controversy swirled, it might stand to reason that Trump would want to be as transparent as possible to avoid any additional criticism. Not so much.
U.S. photographers were apparently prevented from attending the meeting in the Oval Office. So how do we have pictures of it? The meeting was reported to be private, but photographers from the state-run TASS of Russia were there.
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The journalists that are permanently stationed at the White House were not let in.
Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Kislyak has been of particular interest in the investigation into Trump associates. Undisclosed meetings with Kislyak resulted in the firing of Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor.
To sum things up, Trump held a closed-door meeting with Russian representatives — one of whom has been the subject of ongoing investigations regarding the Trump campaign — and kept out the independent U.S. press but allowed in journalists from Russia's state run media on the day after he fired the person who ran the organization that has been investigating his administration's ties to Russia.
So what happened at the meeting? All we have is a release from the White House. The rest is with Trump, a couple Russian diplomats, and a group of state-backed Russian "journalists."
The White House told a reporter for Politico that only "official" photographers were let in.
At least the Russians were willing to share a few pictures.
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Topics Donald Trump
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
