President Donald Trump added two of Breitbart News’s top editors to the annual pre-State of the Union off-the-record lunch with news anchors on Tuesday.
The president invited Breitbart News’s Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle to partake in his gathering with the country’s most prominent anchors, which is a long-running tradition ahead of the prime-time presidential address before Congress. Breitbart News was the lone print outlet on hand. All others present were from television networks.
“President Trump was proud to invite new media to the annual historic State of the Union network luncheon, including Breitbart, Newsmax and News Nation, all of whom deserve a seat at the highly coveted table,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “This just proves once again the Trump White House is the most transparent in history.”
Presidents of both parties have lunch with top network anchors each year.
For instance, a Politico report ahead of Trump’s 2019 lunch noted that Steve Scully, then-Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, Fox News Anchor Martha MacCallum, CBN News’s David Brody, and PBS’s Judy Woodruff were expected.
Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer of CNN were on hand as well that year before Trump excluded the network from the lunch in 2020.
The 2024 State of the Union lunch under former President Joe Biden included David Muir of ABC News, Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, NBC News’s Lester Holt, Fox News’s Shannon Bream, and Lawrence O’Donnell of MS Now, formerly MSNBC, as Deadline reported at the time.
Breitbart News’s Marlow and Boyle joining the event marks an expansion—really an evolution—of the lunch that is sure to cause a stir among politicos around the country.
