MICHELLE COTTLE: Meet the press? Don't bother
Thursday, April 25, 2019 -- Tuesday saw yet another record broken by the Trump White House: the longest run without an official news media briefing.
Posted — UpdatedAt 43 days and counting, this information drought supplants the previous record of 42 days without a briefing, set in March — which broke the 41-day record set in January.
At some point, one cannot help but wonder: What is the job of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who holds the title of White House press secretary?
Conducting daily briefings was once a core function of the press secretary. The White House put its spin on the news of the day; reporters pushed for more information or clarification. Somewhere in all the give-and-take, the public interest was served.
In Sanders’ case, the growing lack of access is arguably less troubling than the lack of credibility — a problem highlighted in last Thursday’s release of the Mueller report.
After the firing of the FBI director, James Comey, in May 2017, Sanders, then the deputy press secretary, claimed on two occasions that she had heard from “countless” current and former agents that the “rank-and-file” had lost confidence in him. When later questioned by Mueller’s office, Sanders admitted that this was untrue — or, rather, that it had been a “slip of the tongue” made “in the heat of the moment.”
Equally false was Sanders’ claim that Trump did not dictate a misleading statement for his son Donald Jr. concerning the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russian go-betweens and senior members of the Trump campaign. Trump’s lawyers told investigators that the president had in fact dictated the statement.
Such responses surely endear the press secretary to this president. While they don’t reflect well upon her, they testify first and foremost to how ill-suited Trump is to his own role.
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