For as much as I loved seeing the Trump administration boot CNN, MS NOW, and Politico to the curb this past week, removing the news orgs from their embedded digs at the White House, the one thing that irked me and still bothers me is how uncharacteristic this is for Trump in his second term. Up until now, the Trump administration has been so disciplined and focused on what it wanted to achieve in a governance sense that the only complaints the media could have, and did have, were that he was keeping his campaign promises. Of course, that's not how they framed it.

Yes, I know, by putting some of the worst legacy media organizations in their place, that’s a promise kept, too. But here’s the strategic problem this creates for the Republicans who want to win majorities in the Senate and House in November. This Trump move will absolutely suck the oxygen out of the current news cycle and just about every news cycle going into the middle of October, and maybe longer.

When that happens, it makes it really hard to keep the spotlight on Trump’s accomplishments on the border, on Democrats' corruption, on the valid reason we’re at war with Iran, on all the social issues that kill the Democrats at the polls, and on what Trump is doing to lower grocery and gas prices, making life more affordable.

Instead, the left gets to do something it loves doing, playing the victim and righteously crying about it non-stop. When they pull old man Barack out of one of his mansions for a video hit or a speech, you know they smell blood. My colleague Matt Margolis did a deep dive on this, but there is more to these two clips than Obama playing the role of the Democrats’ only real heavy hitter still standing.

In a rare instance of solidarity, Fox News learned that ABCNBCCBSCNN were its friends way back when. Though I doubt those networks would do the same thing for Fox News today.

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So now we know that Obama wanted to do the thing Trump actually did. What else is new? One former prez is all talk, the other current prez is all action. But none of this is getting us anywhere. To do that, we need to start with where things stand.

In retaliation for the Trump administration’s revoking of press access to those three news organizations mentioned at the top, on Monday, all of the major TV networks, which include ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, have come to an agreement that they will boycott White House TV pool coverage.

This means that Americans will continue to get their daily coverage of the White House totally uninterrupted. Wait, what?

That’s right. Americans will continue to stay abreast of everything the White House and the Trump administration are doing without interruption. The most transparent White House ever will continue to be just as transparent. But if there is no TV pool coverage, how can that be?

It’s pretty simple, actually, and you likely already know why. No one under the age of 55 watches those networks any longer. They don’t have the clout they once had. Hey Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, and it’s not 2010.

The cold truth is that Americans no longer need those major networks to get their information. They’ve cut the cord already. The audience that waits for Kaitlan Collins to tell them what’s going on in Washington is old enough to be Collins’ grandparents. So for as much noise as the media and the Democrats will make over this, and how it’s “the end of democracy as we know it,” the vast majority of the people across the country don’t know it happened, because they don’t watch. And if they do find out Trump did what he did, they won’t even care.

Trump is not the legacy media’s enemy. Apathy is. This is not to say people don’t want video or audio. Not only do they, but really, that’s how they like to get their information. But they do that already through feeds. Any reporter in the White House press briefing room could set up a camera, and plug into the audio system on site and meet the needs of the viewing public. Sure, it may not be network quality, but one look at TikTok and you’ll see, “network quality” is no longer a prerequisite.

This will put some legacy media people in a bind. Any one of them could capture future briefings on video, but if they do, they’ll be shunned. They will be seen in the media world the way scabs are seen in union halls.

That will leave it to the White House to set up a video feed and make it accessible to all news outlets and the public at the same time. No doubt that if that happens, you’ll see more organizations, like perhaps C-SPAN, possibly join the boycott. But what would that accomplish? The news media crying about free speech and freedom of the press would be self-censoring as a means to get even.

In the end, the leftist media needs Trump more than he needs it. All of the organizations involved know they need White House access to survive, to generate ratings, to attract advertisers and ad revenues, and to remain relevant. Trump doesn’t need them, which is his point. If all they’re going to do is serve as propagandists for his enemies, what’s really in it for him, or for “our sacred democracy?”

Reinforcing this point is none other than the unlikely dynamic duo of the president himself alongside the left's current boy wonder, Gotham City's Democrat mayor Zohran Mamdani, who appeared together at the mayor's Gracie Mansion for a Monday presser.

Trump is a master at this. He still gets the coverage. He still takes all questions without the slightest concern. And in this case, he uses Mamdani as an unwitting prop to make his case, and all Mamdani can do is play along. It's fitting that Mamdani is a millennial, just reinforcing that if there is one thing in the media landscape that is obsolete, it's the White House TV pool.

What all of this amounts to is a reckoning the legacy media is about to have, and not with Trump, but with the reality that things have changed. No one needs them anymore, and no one cares. That’s a tough pill to swallow. It’s so much easier to live in denial and blame Trump, which is what they are doing.

One final thing on this, which is the thing some will miss, but once you see it, you can't unsee it. You know that at some point CNN, MS NOW and Politico will have reporters back in the briefing room. But something has to happen between now and then, and it's likely the thing Trump really excels at — a negotiation.

If you notice, when Trump wants to negotiate with anyone — a country, a tyrant, or a news network — he goes big to get their attention. Something like booting them from the White House grounds. That's his opening volley to launch a negotiation that immediately puts his opponent in a position of weakness. The minute formal negotiations start, it's already understood that the news organizations in this case will have to compromise on some things and meet at least some of Trump's demands. In the end, he comes out ahead. I think that's what he's after.

Let's hope he's right and that it all works out before it can have a material impact on the midterms.