Years as the star of must-see TV, Trump faces the sting of cancellation. A boycott of the White House press pool by the major networks deprives the president of screen time, though he is still finding ways to get on the air.

Peter Baker, who started covering the White House in 1996, said he has never seen a day when television networks refused to participate in the pool. Mr. Trump, for whom television is better than any narcotic, is for the first time partially deprived of the major networks that have covered nearly every movement and utterance he has made for more than a decade.

He was left shouting into the wind at the opening of his new South Lawn helipad, recorded only by a second-tier news broadcaster that could not capture his voice over Marine One. By the end of the day, he appeared live on CNN after cameras met him in New York, not part of the boycott agreement. He had to rely on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to get on air as a guest at Gracie Mansion.

The walkout by the five major networks remains a threat to a president whose 14 seasons on reality television made him a national force. Ramin Setoodeh, author of “Apprentice in Wonderland,” said losing network cameras feels to him like being canceled.