After facing off against the Washington press corps for four rocky months, President Trump is revisiting the idea of limiting media access to his White House.
Mr. Trump told Jeanine Pirro in an interview this weekend that he thinks it is a “good idea” to not have press briefings, unless he holds a press conference himself every two weeks.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Mr. Trump said. “First of all, you have a level of hostility [from the media] that’s incredible and it’s very unfair.”
The president also tweeted Friday, after days of brutal press coverage of his firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, that perhaps the White House should cancel daily press briefings with press secretary Sean Spicer and simply hand out news releases.
White House Correspondents Association President Jeff Mason said daily press briefings and press conferences “provide substantive and symbolic opportunities for journalists to pose questions to officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government.”
“That exercise, conducted in full view of our republic’s citizens, is clearly in line with the spirit of the First Amendment,” Mr. Mason said. “Doing away with briefings would reduce accountability, transparency, and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the U.S. system, no political figure is above being questioned. The White House Correspondents’ Association would object to any move that would threaten those constitutionally-protected principles.”
Mr. Trump’s feud with the media is nothing new. He tweets regularly about “fake news,” and he pointedly skipped the annual White House correspondents’ dinner in late April that presidents almost always attend.
Even before Mr. Trump took office, there were reports that his advisers were considering moving the White House press room to another location outside the West Wing, a proposal that was strenuously opposed by the White House Correspondents Association.
But the tensions over media coverage of the Comey firing are clearly rising. Mr. Spicer said Friday that the president is “a little dismayed” with the media’s treatment of him and his staff.
“We come out here and try to do everything we can to provide you and the American people with what he’s doing on their behalf, what he’s doing to keep the nation safe, what he’s doing to grow jobs, and yet, we see time and time again an attempt to parse every little word and make it more of a game of ’gotcha’ as opposed to really figure out what the policies are, why something is being pursued or what the update is on this,” Mr. Spicer said. “And I think that’s where there’s a lot of dismay, and I don’t think it’s something that just alone the president feels.”
Mr. Trump also said on Twitter Friday that the media is trying to hold his press staff to an unfair standard because, “as a very active president with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!”
Former Obama press secretary Josh Earnest replied on Twitter, “It IS possible if a President 1) prioritizes honesty/accountability (even when it’s hard) 2) hires and empowers aides committed to same.”
The issue came to a head this week when White House spokespersons gave accounts of Mr. Comey’s firing that placed the responsibility mainly on the advice of Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, while Mr. Trump later told NBC News that he’d wanted to fire Mr. Comey all along.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders said the reason for the differing accounts was “pretty simple.”
“I hadn’t had a chance to have the conversation directly with the president … I’d had several conversations with him, but I didn’t ask that question directly,” she said.
In the interview on Fox News, Ms. Pirro asked the president, “Are you moving so quickly that your communications department cannot keep up with you?”
“Yes, that’s true,” Mr. Trump said.
“So what do we do about that?” Ms. Pirro asked.
“We do not have press conferences, and we do…”
“You don’t mean that,” she interjected.
“Well, just don’t have them, unless I have them every two weeks and I do them myself, we don’t have them,” Mr. Trump said.
Pressed him on whether he intends to keep Mr. Spicer in his job, Mr.Trump said Mr. Spicer has been “doing a good job, but he gets beat up.”
“He’s getting beat up,” the president said. “He just gets beat up by these people, and again you know they don’t show the 90 questions that they asked and answered properly. I’m saying if they’re off just a little bit, just a little bit, it’s the big story.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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