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This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent. A lot happened at White House press secretary Caroline Levitt's most recent media briefing on Tuesday.

Levitt announced that the White House will now be deciding who attends these briefings going forward,

an effort to insulate President Trump from tough scrutiny.

She also offered some bafflingly awful spin about the developing fiasco around Elon Musk's

Department of Government Efficiency. At key moments, Leavitt was visibly seething at the media,

and we think we know why. On Tuesday, we also saw Trump hit by more bad economic news

as consumer confidence registered its biggest monthly drop since 2021.

James Downey, a columnist for MSNBC.com, recently wrote a piece

observing that Trump actually doesn't want to talk about the economy these days.

The Levvit briefing

illustrated what's going on nicely, so we're talking to James Downey today. Good to have you on, Jim.

Good to be with you. Let's start with the big announcement. The White House has barred the

Associated Press from the White House press room because the AP is refusing to literally parrot Trump's propaganda that is refusing to use the phrase Gulf of America.

Here's what Levitt added on Tuesday.

As you all know, for decades, a group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents Association, has long dictated which

...