The statement did not name the outlet it was kicking out of the rotation, but only Chanel Rion, a correspondent for the fringe conservative cable channel One America News Network, was seen standing in the back of the room when the president called on her to ask a question.

Rion also attended the previous two days of news briefings, standing in the back of the back of the room on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that Rion was approached by a representative for the WHCA who asked her to leave because she wasn’t in the rotation to cover that evening’s briefing. Rion refused, saying she was there “as a guest of Stephanie Grisham,” the White House press secretary, according to the Times.

President Donald Trump has in recent months begun to single out the network for praise over its glowing coverage of his administration and strident defenses of the president. During Trump’s impeachment, Rion traveled to Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, where the two filmed a multipart series promoting unfounded conspiracy theories aimed at defending Trump against the allegations at the center of his impeachment.

Rion has most recently been panned for her line of questioning in daily briefings by the White House coronavirus task force. Several weeks ago, when Trump was under fire for referring to the novel coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” because of where it originated, Rion asked the president whether he believed it was racist to refer to “Chinese food” as such.

She then accused “major left-wing media, even in this room,” of teaming up “with Chinese Communist Party narratives” about the virus, which has blossomed into a global pandemic. Afterward, Rion tweeted out a picture of a message she said someone had left on her desk in the White House press area criticizing her questions.

Ah, workplace drama... ever so incomplete without that dash of anonymous passive aggression.



Welcome to the basement. pic.twitter.com/s7minUhwpa — Chanel Rion OAN (@ChanelRion) March 19, 2020

During Monday’s news briefing, when Trump called on Rion, she used the occasion to compare the death toll of coronavirus to the number of abortions in the country. She asked whether Trump supported conservative states that were barring the procedures by labeling them elective surgeries that need to be put off to conserve medical resources for seriously ill coronavirus patients. Trump demurred, saying he wanted to unify Democrats and Republicans to fight the outbreak.

At Tuesday’s briefing, Rion asked about how many clinical trials the administration would want to see for hydroxychloroquine — an antimalarial drug Trump has championed for fighting the coronavirus based on anecdotal results — before the government put its stamp of approval on it. The president didn’t field the question, instead deferring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the task force.