The Trump administration is planning to tell federal agencies to cancel their subscriptions to the Washington Post and the New York Times according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
“Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving—hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be saved,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email Thursday.
The Wall Street Journal reported that it is currently unknown how many subscriptions to the two newspapers the federal government has.
Federal employees are eligible for free online subscriptions to the Washington Post if they use a valid .gov email address, so even if their agencies were to cancel a Post subscription, they could continue to access the website using this method.
President Trump has a longstanding distaste for the news outlets, repeatedly calling them “fake news” and has also said that the Times and Post “treat me terribly.”
President Trump told White House staff this week to cancel subscriptions to the newspapers. “We don’t event want it [New York Times] in the White House anymore,” Trump said in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. “We’re going to probably terminate that and the Washington Post. They’re fake.”
A White House official said that the newspapers were not among those delivered to the White House on Thursday, although aides said they anticipate Trump will still read the papers.
White House says it’s going to do things and doesn’t always follow through, but NYT and WaPo subscriptions were ended.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 24, 2019
Some aides privately expressing regret. But doubt Trump will stop reading either.
WaPo *online* subscription remains.
WH still gets WSJ, Hill, NY Post etc. pic.twitter.com/1H3lzdBtYM
