Presidential Campaigns Haven’t Agreed To ‘Acceptable’ Post-Election Press Access

On Nov 9, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States. But whether reporters are able to follow her or him throughout the day, as is done for the sitting president, remains unclear. Neither campaign has yet agreed to a protective pool to track the president-elect’s movements, a departure from recent election cycles.

“It is not normal and it is unacceptable,” said Jeff Mason, a Reuters correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. The White House Correspondents’ Association oversees the rotating group of reporters who travel everywhere with the president and file dispatches to the larger press corps on what he’s doing, whom he’s meeting with and when he returns home. This arrangement, known as a protective pool, is considered necessary to ensure journalists are present in the event of any newsworthy comment or moment, including a threat on the president’s life. Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns have traveling press pools, but neither is fully protective. The Democratic and Republican standard-bearers in recent election cycles ― including Sen John McCain (R-AZ) and former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney ― had protective pools in place by the time they wrapped up the summer conventions. In letters sent to the Clinton and Trump campaigns, the WHCA’s leadership expressed “profound concern and consternation” at both for so far failing to establish a protective pool system and urged each “to remedy the situation without delay for the remainder of the 2016 campaign.”