This White House Reporter Stood Up to Trump Admin Amid Threats

Since Donald Trump was elected president, the White House has had a pretty contentious relationship with the press. It's been outright defamatory at times and has now veered into a type of totalitarian aspect within the White House press room. But Chris Johnson, a journalist from the Washington Blade, didn't mind confronting the administration when they overstepped.

According to reports, the White House attempted to rearrange press seating in the press room. Likely in a move of retribution over negative coverage, a decision was made to move CNN to one of the back row seats in the daily pressers. The issue: seating in the press room isn't decided by the White House.

"Just to show you the Soviet-style, totalitarian-like lengths they were going to, this evening they were trying to rearrange the seats in the briefing room," Jim Acosta said in a recent appearance with Anderson Cooper on television. "Our colleague Kaitlan Collins would be stuck in the back of the briefing room instead of being in the front row of the briefing room and another reporter would be moved to the front of the briefing room."

"That print reporter, Chris Johnson, thank goodness for him, refused to get up out of his seat," Acosta explained. "So it took almost an act of civil disobedience to foil the White House plan. There was a White House official who was saying 'well we're going to get the Secret Service involved if you guys don't switch seats around.'"

"Yeah because Kaitlan Collins is such a security risk that the Secret Service would be involved," Cooper joked.

Seating in the briefing room is notably determined by the Correspondents' Association.

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