Daily Times (Primos, PA)

Trump team puts the ‘brief’ in press briefing

- By Julie Bykowicz

WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump’s White House is putting the “brief” in press briefings.

Sean Spicer, the embattled press secretary, spoke for 30 minutes Tuesday and didn’t answer a number of basic questions, including whether the president believes Russia interfered in the 2016 election and whether Trump had seen the hotly debated Senate health care bill.

Once more freewheeli­ng exchanges, White House press briefings have been shrinking both in length and content as Trump’s senior aides clamp down on informatio­n and contend with the president’s own lack of message discipline and preference for speaking directly to his fan base.

The administra­tion has erected other barriers to transparen­cy as well, such as refusing to make its visitor logs public. And Trump hasn’t held a full press conference since February or participat­ed in interviews since the end of April.

The White House’s lessis-best approach to public informatio­n has become more pronounced since Trump returned from his nine-day, five-nation tour in late May.

White House officials believed the trip garnered good coverage even though the president eschewed a longtime presidenti­al tradition of holding a news conference overseas and provided only limited public press briefings. About the same time, probes into Russian election interferen­ce and the Trump campaign’s possible role in it provided fresh incentive for the president and White House officials to avoid question-andanswer sessions sure to be dominated by the unwelcome topic.

Those developmen­ts may have reinforced what was already on Trump’s mind: On May 12, he had tweeted, “Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”

White House communicat­ions officials “obviously feel it has ceased to pay dividends” to follow their predecesso­rs’ press strategy, said Eric Dezenhall, who worked on President Ronald Reagan’s communicat­ions team and leads a public relations firm in Washington. “They’ve decided to bypass the media completely and stop pretending there’s anything to gain.”

Dezenhall said that while he understand­s the strategy, “it’s terrifying from a democracy standpoint.”

David Boardman, chairman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Trump’s method of communicat­ing via Twitter creates a compelling need “to follow up on those 140-character proclamati­ons with questions.”

He said a trend toward less transparen­cy has rippled through all levels of government, and the approach is set at the top.

“For many decades, it has been accepted that the White House is the people’s house, and that the administra­tion has an obligation to come before the people as represente­d by the press,” Boardman said. “This is far more than just a spat between reporters and the White House. It’s something people really ought to care about.”

Trump has open discussion swapped about politics and policy for his favored forms of one-way communicat­ion.

 ??  ??
 ?? ALEX BRANDON — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? White House press secretary Sean Spicer points to a question during a briefing at the White House, Tuesday in Washington.
ALEX BRANDON — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS White House press secretary Sean Spicer points to a question during a briefing at the White House, Tuesday in Washington.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States