Donald Trump has repeatedly floated an idea that would physically remove the press corps from its closest quarters: replacing the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room with a swimming pool, the New York Times reported, in a story carried internationally on Wednesday.
According to the report, Trump raised the proposal at the end of August in the Oval Office with then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt and senior aides, asking her to move journalists out of the briefing room. He is said to have made the request several times over several months, and to have described it as a possible 'final legacy.'
The pool would be a restoration, not a new build. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had an indoor pool built on the West Terrace in 1933 as therapy for the effects of polio; President Richard Nixon later had it covered over to create the space the media now uses, with accredited journalists working from a small connected office.
The proposal did not move forward while Leavitt was in office, according to three people familiar with the discussions. Media historians note the symbolism either way: the briefing room's proximity to the Oval Office has long been treated as a physical recognition of press freedom's place in American government, which is why even a floated move draws outsized attention.
