The Trump campaign threw a spanner in the works of Amazon’s first-ever Election Night special with Brian Williams by barring the reporter who was primed to broadcast live from the former president’s Palm Beach headquarters.
Former ABC News White House correspondent Tara Palmeri, now senior political correspondent for Puck, was told at the eleventh hour that she wouldn’t be getting her credentials to cover the event.
Sources said Palmeri had worried that senior Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita was upset over her coverage after she was initially prevented from entering Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York. She was allowed in after being recognized by staffers, but Amazon’s Election Night producers were becoming increasingly concerned that their plans for Palmeri to report from Trump’s Florida HQ were going awry.
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The former lead author of Playbook, described on her Puck profile as “Washington’s most feared and fearless politics reporter,” was initially told there was nothing to worry about.
But those fears were confirmed on Nov. 1 after the reporter tweeted about her latest story on Puck, writing: “NEW: The Trump campaign has paused its premature celebration and fallen into sweat mode, as early-voting numbers indicate more women are turning up than men in must-win PA & operatives are bringing out the briefcases for lawfare. “They’re going so crazy here.”
The response from LaCivita on X, formerly known as Twitter, confirmed Palmeri’s—and Amazon’s—worst fears.
“Actually,” he wrote, “this bulls--t tweet is a result of the fact that ‘famed’ gossip columnist @tarapalmeri was DENIED credentials to enter Mar-a-largo to cover election night due to her ‘proclivity’ to write bulls--t. well well well.”
Palmeri argued she had covered the Trump campaign fairly without bias for the past year and needed to be certain of being allowed into the Mar-a-Lago event for the Amazon broadcast.
The election special’s executive producer Jonathan Wald, reportedly appealed to the Trump campaign to lift the ban, but to no avail.
It didn’t seem to matter that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos refused to buckle to criticism over his decision to prevent editors at The Washington Post from endorsing Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential election.
“She was told she’d been put in a no-fly zone,” said a source. “And once LaCivita made it public there was no going back.”
Instead of reporting from the Trump event, Palmeri was sent to California to broadcast on the set with Williams, while the New York Post’s Lydia Moynihan was dispatched to Florida.
Puck editor-in-chief and co-founder Jon Kelly said in a statement: “The campaign’s decision was obviously unfortunate, but the impediment will not in any way prevent Tara or any of my partners from reporting rigorously and ferociously on the story of our time.”
Participants in the special were slated to include Douglas Brinkley, James Carville, Shepard Smith, Mike Murphy, Abby Huntsman, Erin Perrine, Erin McPike, Jessica Yellin, Axios’ Hans Nichols, and The Washington Post’s Jackie Alemany, among others.
Find the Daily Beast’s coverage of the 2024 election here. Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast.
