One photograph changed everything between the White House and the Associated Press.
The official explanation never quite added up, and now a new report says there was a second reason the AP got shut out.
And what New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jim Rutenberg uncovered about a private lunch is going to raise a lot of questions.
What the Times Report Actually Found
The story the White House told publicly was simple enough: the AP refused to call the Gulf of Mexico by its new name, the Gulf of America, so the administration pulled its press pool credentials. Clean, tidy, easy to argue about.
But Haberman and Rutenberg reported recently that the Gulf of America dispute was not the whole story.
“Another reason for the ban: The A.P. would not give the Trump team rights to its photo of Mr. Trump, bloodied with a raised fist, after he was shot in Butler, Pa., in 2024. At a private lunch with Mr. Trump and network anchors last year, White House aides tied the A.P. ban to the denial of the rights to the photo, according to two people briefed on the event,” the report said.
That is a significant detail. The Gulf naming fight was the public justification. The photograph was apparently the deeper grievance — one that White House aides were willing to discuss openly at a private lunch with network anchors, according to two people briefed on that conversation.
Trump has used the photo on campaign materials, merchandise, and official White House displays, most notably replacing former President Barack Obama’s official White House portrait in the State Floor foyer with a painting of the moment after the assassination attempt. The image carries real political weight for the President, and the AP held the rights to it.
AP photographer Evan Vucci took the famous photograph of Trump raising his fist moments after surviving the assassination attempt during a campaign rally. While other photographers captured images of Trump’s fist-pump, Vucci’s photo has been used on flags, Trump’s upcoming book, and even as a backdrop for US lawmakers questioning the Secret Service director in the wake of the attempted assassination.
The AP owns it. They chose not to hand over the rights. And the relationship between the wire service and the White House deteriorated sharply after that.
How the Gulf of America Fight Became the Public Flashpoint
AP’s chief White House correspondent, Zeke Miller, testified that he was told explicitly by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on February 11 that the news organization was being banned from an event that day due to its refusal to adopt Trump’s novel “Gulf of America” nomenclature.
Leavitt told reporters, “It is a privilege to cover this White House. Nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given.”
She is right about that, as a matter of basic constitutional structure. The Oval Office is not a public square. The President has always had discretion over who gets close access. That has never been seriously disputed.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said the decision “exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation,” adding, “While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One.”
And for the record, the AP had angered the White House because it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico by President Trump’s preferred name for it: the Gulf of America. The AP acknowledges in its coverage that the US government now calls it the Gulf of America, but the news service still relies on the more familiar, traditional designation, especially as the AP serves clients internationally.
That is a defensible editorial position. So is the White House’s decision to limit access to outlets that it believes are pushing inaccurate information. Both things can be true at once.
What is harder to square is the revelation that the photograph dispute was apparently running underneath the Gulf fight all along — and that White House aides brought it up at a lunch with network anchors as a reason for the ban.
The Larger Campaign the Times Is Describing
Haberman and Rutenberg placed the AP situation inside a much bigger argument. In a lengthy front-page Sunday feature, Haberman and colleague Jim Rutenberg catalogued various instances of the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out what they called “a sweeping campaign to control speech in America.”
The Times report cited the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, noting that the United States now ranks at its lowest since the organization started the index in 2002 — 64th, just above Panama and just below Botswana. That framing deserves some scrutiny. Reporters Without Borders is a left-leaning advocacy organization. Its methodology and the political assumptions built into its rankings are not neutral, and its conclusions should be read with that in mind.
The White House pushed back. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Times that “biased reporting from the media is a disservice to the American people,” and repeated the White House talking point that Trump gives the press “unprecedented access,” adding, “We utilize every tool available to ensure that accurate reporting is provided to the public and the stain of those who knowingly peddle false information is held accountable.”
That is the administration’s consistent position, and it reflects something real. The mainstream press corps spent years running stories that collapsed under scrutiny — on the Russia collusion narrative, on the lab leak question, on the Hunter Biden laptop. The credibility problem the legacy media faces did not begin with this White House.
But the photograph detail is something different. If the White House was using the Gulf of America fight as a public pretext while the real grievance was the AP’s refusal to hand over image rights to a photo of the President, that is worth knowing. Access to the Oval Office is a presidential prerogative. Using that access as leverage to extract intellectual property from a news organization is a different kind of transaction.
The First Amendment question here is not simple. In an April 2025 decision restoring the AP’s access, US District Judge Trevor N McFadden, a Trump appointee, said his decision aligned with the right to free speech, writing, “Under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.”
A Trump-appointed judge reached that conclusion. That is not a small thing.
And the photograph angle, now surfaced by two reporters with deep sourcing inside the Trump orbit, suggests the administration’s motivations were layered in ways that were not publicly disclosed at the time. Whether that rises to the level of a constitutional violation is a legal question. Whether it reflects well on the administration’s stated commitment to press transparency is a different question entirely.
The AP chose not to give away the rights to one of the most consequential photographs in recent American political history. That is their call to make. The image belongs to them. The White House wanted it, did not get it, and the relationship between the two organizations deteriorated in ways that are still playing out in federal court.
The Haberman-Rutenberg report does not settle the underlying press freedom debate. The legacy media’s credibility problems are real. The administration’s frustration with outlets it views as adversarial is understandable given the coverage record of the last decade. But the specific allegation that a private photograph dispute was driving White House access decisions while a different public explanation was offered to reporters — that is the kind of detail that tends to stick.
Sources: Mediaite, “Trump Reportedly Banned the AP From Coverage Over Rights To Raised Fist Photo”; The New York Times (Maggie Haberman and Jim Rutenberg); Snopes; Variety; NPR; The National Desk