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A crush of photographers and reporters nearly broke a lamp in the Oval Office on Friday as they elbowed for room to see Donald Trump meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
It's customary for a limited contingent of journalists, called a press pool, to be allowed into the president's office to witness him greeting heads of state.
But Moon's arrival attracted a larger than usual contingent of foreign press from Korean outlets, and the White House gamely tried to accommodate them all.
Few in the group were familiar with how Oval Office photo-ops work.
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White House director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller (right) saved an expensive lamp from tumbling to the ground on Friday when a crush of Korean photographers slid a couch into an end table as they jockeye d to get pictures of South Korean president Moon Jae-in
A visibly annoyed President Donald Trump scolded the press but Moon seemed amused
The lamps on the Oval Office end tables have heavy marble bases, making the near-tumble unusual
As they clambered over each other to get the best view, still and video cameras smacked at least one print journalist in the head.
A few photographers pushed a couch. Which nudged an end table. Which sent an expensive lamp tipping over toward its doom.
A quick-thinking Keith Schiller, the former Trump bodyguard who now serves as director of Oval Office operations, saved the day with a one-handed grab.
'Easy, fellas. Hey!' a visibly annoyed Trump scolded. 'Fellas! Fellas! Easy!'
'Wow, you guys are getting worse.'
Moon seemed amused.
A sequence of still frames from this C-SPAN video shows the lamp starting to tumble and Schiller moving quickly to catch it
An unusually large crush of photographers and TV journalists is commonplace when heads of state from the Far East visit the White House
As impatient shutters snapped fast enough to sound like a Washington downpour, the president turned to his Korean counterpart.
'They knocked the table down,' he said.
'It's actually a very friendly press. Don't let that get you, although we just lost a table.'
Schiller, one of Trump's longest-serving aides, was famously dispatched to the FBI quarters on May 9 with a letter telling then-director James Comey that he was being fired.
Comey was three time zones a way in California and found out by watching TV.
Source: Another clash with the press! Photographers elbowing each other for room nearly break Oval Office lamp – only for Trump's quick-thinking bodyguard to save the day
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