A reporter for the political news site Politico was removed from a Donald Trump rally after having been spotted by security reporting from outside the designated press area without credentials.
The reporter wrote late Thursday night that he was attending the rally in San Jose, Calif., earlier that day. He wrote that he did not receive press credentials from the Trump campaign to attend as a reporter, but got inside the venue with a general admission ticket.
“A campaign staffer spotted [me] typing on a laptop outside of the press pen at the San Jose Convention Center and asked [me], who was attending on a general admission ticket, if [I] had press credentials,” wrote the reporter, Ben Schreckinger. “The Trump campaign has refused to credential [me] for multiple events.”
Schreckinger said he was then instructed to leave the event and that afterward, he received an email notice from the Trump campaign denying him, again, for credentials to cover a different rally to be held Friday in Redding, Calif.
It is not unusual to require press to register with political campaigns to cover their private events, though Trump’s operation has blacklisted some news organizations or specific reporters.
The Trump campaign also requires that reporters attending his rallies remain inside a designated area, a rule Schreckinger didn’t follow, according to his own account.
