President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will continue to restrict The Associated Press' access to his events and news conferences until the news outlet goes along with his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico in its reports. He acknowledged that the move was a presidential retaliation against the news agency's editorial policy.
“We're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America,” Trump said, speaking to reporters who witnessed the signing of an executive order at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. “We're very proud of this country, and we want it to be the Gulf of America.”
It was the first time the president himself had commented on the issue since the White House began not allowing AP to cover several of his events last week. Two journalists from AP were denied entrance to Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday; they watched a live television feed of Trump's remarks and were unable to ask questions.
Shortly after taking office, Trump renamed the international body of water, which borders the United States, Mexico and other countries and has been named the Gulf of Mexico for more than 400 years. The AP, whose influential Stylebook is the arbiter for editorial choices at thousands of news outlets and other editorial operations, said it would continue to use Gulf of Mexico and note Trump's decision, to ensure that names of geographical features are recognizable around the world.
“The Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is,” Trump said, an apparent reference to his executive order renaming the Gulf. No law prevents the AP from choosing the style it deems fit.
AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton said Tuesday that “this is about the government telling the public and press what words to use and retaliating if they do not follow government orders. The White House has restricted AP's coverage of presidential events because of how we refer to a location.”
AP frames it as a free-speech issue
While the AP has framed the dispute as a First Amendment issue, Trump's team says access to its events — most of which are funded by tax dollars — is a privilege extended by invitation, and that while AP is still permitted on White House grounds, it no longer has the right to be part of pools that cover events where space is limited.
While Trump characterized AP as standing alone against the name change, outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post are also using Gulf of Mexico. Fox News Channel said it will use Gulf of America as a reference. Axios, noting that it primarily serves a U.S. audience, said its reference will be “Gulf of America (renamed by the U.S. from Gulf of Mexico)." Additionally, AP's myriad customers that use its content follow AP style.
It's all part of an ongoing series of actions by the White House that has targeted legacy media. The Pentagon has evicted eight news organizations from workspaces at the Pentagon, and Trump is continuing his lawsuit against CBS News for how it edited a “60 Minutes” interview with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, last fall.
Elon Musk, who is coordinating cutbacks in government staffing for Trump, posted on his X social media platform after a “60 Minutes” broadcast Sunday that people there “deserve a long prison sentence.”
Trump has issues with AP beyond the Gulf disagreement
Through a story in Axios over the weekend, the Trump administration broadened its complaints against the AP beyond the Gulf dispute. White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich told Axios that the administration is concerned about AP “weaponizing language through their Stylebook to push a partisan world view.”
Specifically, it objects to the Stylebook's use of the phrase “gender-affirming care” to describe medical treatments for transgender people, and the capitalization of Black and not white in racial descriptions.
Trump said that some of the phrases that the AP wants to use are “ridiculous” and “obsolete.” “I guess some are OK, but many aren't,” the president said, without being specific.
He also said, referring to himself in the third person, that AP “has been very, very wrong on the election on Trump and the treatment of Trump and other things having to do with Trump and Republicans and conservatives. And they're doing us no favors. And I guess I'm doing them no favors. That's the way life works.”
It was unclear which election he was referring to. The AP reported Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election against Trump, and Trump the victor over Harris last fall.
Trump's Mar-a-Lago appearance on Tuesday was opened to several news outlets that were not part of the small group of reporters that have been traveling with the president in Florida since Friday. Among the outlets admitted into Mar-a-Lago Tuesday were The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Axios, Fox News Channel and Agence France-Presse.
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AP White House correspondent Darlene Superville contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
David Bauder, The Associated Press
