Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren Over six days within the past month, first lady JILL BIDEN visited four countries on three continents. She attended a royal wedding in Amman, Jordan, toured the pyramids outside Cairo and met with groups of students and young entrepreneurs in Egypt and Morocco. The visit drew coverage abroad, but almost none back home in the U.S. — largely because only one Washington-based journalist covered it. Just days before the scheduled May 30 departure, with no reporters planning to go, the first lady’s team called Al-Arabiya correspondent NADIA BILBASSY about pooling the trip. “I didn’t really question it because it’s the Middle East,” she told West Wing Playbook. “Given my background and knowledge of the region, I was happy to go.” But it quickly became clear Bilbassy would be the only reporter following the first lady — and the lone pooler emailing frequent dispatches back to the White House press corps. “It was exhausting,” Bilbassy said. “When you have additional reporters, you have more sets of eyes, not just two. You can ask the other poolers, ‘Did I get that quote right?’ It was a big responsibility, but also a great exercise for a reporter.” The decision by other newspapers and networks to skip the first lady’s trip abroad was not necessarily about a lack of interest in her travels. It was largely driven by timing and cost considerations. As the 2024 presidential primary season heats up, news organizations are shifting resources to early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. That’s making it more challenging for the first lady, and to some extent the vice president — neither of whom have a protective press pool accompanying them at all times like the president does — to convince journalists to spend the money to cover their travels. When Vice President KAMALA HARRIS traveled to the Bahamas last week, a majority of the five network chiefs voted for the first time against sending a TV pooler. That meant there was no video footage of the trip for the networks to use. Similarly, the East Wing has struggled to recruit poolers for some recent domestic and foreign trips, trying to compensate by offering interviews or readouts afterward. That was the case after the first lady attended ceremonies on the anniversary of 9/11 and the coronation of KING CHARLES in London. In the car following the coronation ceremony, she called two reporters, the AP’s DARLENE SUPERVILLE and CNN’s BETSY KLEIN, to talk about the experience. The first lady’s trip to Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Portugal came only a week after President JOE BIDEN returned from the G-7 summit in Japan. The cancelation of the second leg of that trip — a scheduled visit to Papua New Guinea and Australia — left news organizations on the hook for more than half of the cost of an expensive charter flight that had been booked to shuttle journalists straight from Hiroshima to Sydney. But for some outlets, the waning interest in following FLOTUS abroad also has to do with lingering frustrations from their last trip. When Jill Biden traveled to Africa in February, several reporters went along, two of them agreeing to travel after the East Wing promised opportunities to sit down with her one-on-one. But there was drama when the White House prevented the broader pool from observing the first lady walking through a public slum because CNN, promised an exclusive, was filming its b-roll. More drama came later, when CNN, having planned an hour-long primetime special around its exclusive, fumed about the AP correspondent having a video crew for her interview, which they assumed would be off-camera. Several journalists involved in deciding whether to cover the first lady’s most recent trip said lingering frustrations from past travels were part of the calculation. Beyond the issues over who got exclusives, some have grown frustrated with how few opportunities they’ve had to engage directly with the first lady making it harder to justify costly overseas coverage. “She doesn’t answer questions anymore, and it’s because of Anthony,” one person said, referring to the first lady’s chief of staff, ANTHONY BERNAL. “And they’re missing opportunities to make news and reach audiences because of it.” The first lady’s office took issue with that assessment. It noted that she did three interviews on the Africa trip and read two on-the-record statements to the pool, which was told not to ask questions afterward, according to two people with knowledge of the trip. She took questions from the pool at the start of the trip but aides insisted that another gaggle she did before returning to Washington would be off the record. “Whether we have press traveling with us or the outlets decide to cover the First Lady with their local resources, we are always attentive to the needs of the media,” said VANESSA VALDIVIA, Jill Biden’s press secretary. “We also understand the scheduling and budget constraints newsrooms are facing and will continue to coordinate with press to ensure their investments in traveling are worthwhile." Over her six days overseas earlier this month, the first lady did not do an interview with Bilbassy as she followed her from stop to stop. But the East Wing, appreciating the job she did as their lone pooler, is working to arrange a sit-down interview with her soon, possibly as early as this week. MESSAGE US — Are you COLBY REDMOND, special assistant to the chief of staff for the first lady? We want to hear from you. 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