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On Pebble Beach, the strip of broadcast booths that line the driveway leading up to the West Wing<\/a> of the White House<\/a>, you typically find some of television\u2019s biggest stars, standing erect atop little wooden boxes, the glow of the camera light dancing off their thick coats of makeup, readying themselves to deliver a hit with the most famous building in the world as their backdrop.<\/p>\n This week, many of those booths sat empty, rain lashing the hunter green tarps that covered them, as President Donald Trump\u2019s ban of three news outlets<\/a> from the White House metastasized into a broader boycott by the press. It was unseasonably quiet inside the cramped press rooms of the White House, which are typically bustling with journalists awaiting the next hit or the daily briefing, though the latter hasn\u2019t happened with much regularity as of late.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, two bored members of the press corps sat in the briefing room and debated the timing of the court hearing on the challenge to Trump\u2019s ban. A young press aide walked into the room and complained about her cell reception. \u201cWhy do I never have service in my office?\u201d she asked no one in particular. \u201cIt must be China.\u201d Raghubir Goyal, an eccentric veteran of the briefing room who serves as White House correspondent for India Globe,<\/em> a newspaper that appears to no longer exist, stood at the press secretary\u2019s dusty podium and filmed selfie videos.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Trump barred reporters from \u201cupper press\u201d\u2014the rooms down the hall from the Oval Office that house senior communications aides\u2014which has made the West Wing a considerably less valuable place for reporters to be. \u201cYou can\u2019t go into upper press and talk to someone with authority,\u201d says one White House reporter who now prefers to make calls from his members club.<\/p>\n Trump announced the decision to ban the three outlets\u2014CNN, MS Now, and Politico<\/em>\u2014abruptly, without warning some of his top staffers. A White House official, declining to be named, tells Vanity Fair:<\/em> \u201cNobody close to the president was surprised at his action to hold the fake news accountable.\u201d Susie Wiles was miles away from Washington when it was decreed on Truth Social, and those left at the White House on Friday afternoon scrambled to figure out how to implement the president\u2019s order. Some aides advised against the revocations, I\u2019m told, warning it would have unintended consequences for Trump\u2019s coverage. He ignored them. (Vanity Fair<\/em> has reached out to the White House for comment.)<\/p>\n The hastiness helps to explain why the administration\u2019s defenses of the order varied so exotically. It\u2019s \u201ca ban on the free press,\u201d Trump said in the Oval Office. \u201cWe are banning them, yes, we are.\u201d Clear enough. No, wait, here\u2019s the vice president: \u201cHe\u2019s not banning media outlets.\u201d JD Vance went on to blame the ban that is not a ban on biased coverage. \u201cAbout 92% of the stories that they have on the president of the United States, on the administration, are negative,\u201d he reasoned. The White House, in its own statement<\/a>, said Trump was banning outlets \u201cfriendly to the Radical Left.\u201d Then, in a court filing<\/a>, Trump\u2019s Justice Department argued the trouble was not bias but that reporting from these outlets posed a threat to national security.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n