Trump cancels 1st press conference
NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump on Monday cancelled the only news conference he has scheduled since his election, continuing to communicate with the public via Twitter and carefully curated, one-on-one interviews.
Trump aides said Monday that an announcement planned for Thursday on the future of Trump’s business empire had been rescheduled. Spokesman Sean Spicer said in an email that moving the announcement “ensures the legal team has ample time to ensure the proper protocols are put in place so his sole focus will remain on the country and achieving his ambitious agenda with the help of the worldclass cabinet he has built.”
Trump has kept up an active Twitter profile and has done a handful of television interviews, including a lengthy sitdown that aired Sunday on Fox News. But for decades, most presidents-elect have held a news conference within days of the election. Those events differ from one-on-one interviews, because the presidentelect must field questions from a broader range of journalists.
Trump has also lagged his predecessors in setting up a pool of journalists to provide the public with information about his whereabouts. Last month, he left Trump Tower and went out for dinner without notifying journalists stationed in the lobby. But since then his team has started travelling more regularly with a pool, though the journalists still do not fly on the same plane as Trump.
Every president and president-elect in recent memory has travelled with a pool of journalists when leaving the White House grounds. News organizations take turns serving in the small group, paying their way and sharing the material collected in the pool with the larger press corps. The White House depends on having journalists nearby at all times to relay the president’s first comments on breaking news.