Trump Campaign Bars an NBC Reporter From a New Hampshire Event

NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard, who was representing a pool of five major TV networks, said the Trump campaign objected to his presence.

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Donald J. Trump, who popularized the term “fake news” and as president declared the news media “the enemy of the people,” is again clashing with journalists over press access, this time to his 2024 campaign events.

An NBC News correspondent said on Sunday that aides to Mr. Trump stopped him from covering an event in New Hampshire, where the former president was expected to make his first in-person remarks after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dropped out of the race.

Vaughn Hillyard, a longtime NBC News correspondent who regularly covers Mr. Trump, had planned to attend as a pool reporter representing five major TV networks. But he told other campaign journalists that the Trump team objected to his presence.

“Your pooler was told that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day,” Mr. Hillyard wrote in an email to the rest of the pool that was obtained by The New York Times. “After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2:20 p.m. that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today.”

Because candidate events often take place in cramped spaces, campaign journalists have long relied on a so-called pool system, in which one reporter attends on behalf of other news organizations. The television pool consists of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC, with the networks taking turns on a preset schedule. Each network selects the individual journalist who is assigned to represent the pool.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Steven Cheung, acknowledged that the network pool did not attend the New Hampshire event, but he said the Trump campaign does not “bar reporters based on their reporting.” Mr. Cheung said the campaign holds some events without a network pool, and noted that the pooling system for presidential candidates is less formal than the system in place for covering the president at the White House.

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