Your bag is empty.
The last time a president held a news conference in the Brady Briefing room, I was there.
Donald Trump was not. President Obama was.
With the exception of briefly entering the room and frightening a photographer early in his administration, President Trump has not stepped foot in the Brady Briefing Room during office hours since his imaginary record-breaking inauguration in 2017. And given press secretary Grisham’s remarks earlier this week—the familiar claim that daily press briefings will only resume when Trump wants them to—it’s all but unthinkable that will happen any time soon.
Whether or not Trump lumbers through the press offices at night moaning and speaking in tongues while giggling his ass off at his publicity is a matter of some speculation but has never been confirmed. We do know this: Whether fiction or fact, if Trump wants to use that story then he will do so.
Thus is the true menace of Donald Trump. Every fiction can be fact and fact can be fiction in order to suit whatever argument he is in the mood to make.
To be effective in this endeavor, Trump has tried to undermine American journalism so people wouldn’t believe anything negatively written or said about him. Screaming “Fake News” and “The enemy of the people” are as fine a starting point as “Lock Her Up!” and “Make America great again!”
The president’s press strategy therefore has evolved along amoral, pragmatic and sometimes vicious lines. What governs it all is an unyielding need to win. The game is Trump vs. the Media. The media have been slow to step up, but Trump hopes they’ll make it exciting in the fourth quarter. He has scored with deep strikes and decisive blows against the press and just doesn’t understand the game is all in his head.
Most former press secretaries recognized that a two-way exchange of questions and answers between the press and the president helped to guide policy. But Trump has other ideas. He ended press briefings and punishes the world with hacks like Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller on the morning shows before he starts tweeting for prime time. The business channels get Larry Kudlow, the last remaining administration official with any sense. Certain business reporters routinely include his name in their nightly prayers.
By killing the press briefing, Trump is trying to kill independent reporting and independent thought. It’s having other effects.
The Trump administration’s resulting public schedule, other than formal state visits and large speeches behind bullet-proof glass, roughly boil down to this:
- Tweets
- South Lawn presidential departures and arrivals from Marine One
- Administration officials holding impromptu driveway gaggles following television appearances
- Briefings by subordinate officials
- Rallies
- Pool Sprays
Trump has announced policy, fired members of his administration and ranted and raved incoherently in his tweets. And since you cannot interact with the president in real-time on Twitter, he has found it an excellent platform from which to govern.
Trump’s recent South Lawn appearances have been marginally better than tweets, as he takes questions from the open press (i.e. any reporter with a White House press pass). Since he seems to like the adulation of screaming fans, his South Lawn standup specials have paid the extra dividend of making him look like the most accessible president since God, who, upon the advice of Donald Trump, forged the Earth from the center of a star.
True—reporters do get to talk to this president more than any other president I’ve ever covered. But listening to an unchained junkyard dog yap for hours on end gets on your nerves and provides few answers; that’s the value of Trump’s “Chopper Talk.” He hasn’t had a solo press conference at the White House since February, when he told me to sit down after I asked a question about immigration he didn’t want to answer. Pool sprays consisting of a small group of reporters welcomed into a staged event where Trump takes two or three questions are just Chopper Talks without the roar of a helicopter engine.
Worse are the impromptu gaggles on the North Lawn driveway after Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, Hogan Gidley or another administration official puts in an appearance on their favorite television network. These interactions have degenerated into events unworthy of attending unless you’re a sadomasochist in need of a fix or you wish to be insulted, ignored or treated like a mushroom.
Press secretary Stephanie Grisham has conducted no briefings since she took the job last July. Her personal contribution is limited to appearances on Fox television and other right-wing outlets, mostly in the morning and often before anyone is available in the White House press office.
There have been three recent briefings. They concerned immigration and veteran affairs and were conducted by administration officials other than the press secretary. The White House gave no advance guidance or information as to what the briefings were to be about. Were we supposed to guess?
As a result of these actions the entire administration is out of touch, desperate, insecure and unable to connect with a growing number of American voters.
Trump goes to rallies. He goes to sporting events. Other than being booed heavily in public—not a unique presidential occurrence by any measure—Trump has taken little opportunity to find out what others think of him. He gets enough of that watching television, and at least he doesn’t have to answer questions from the screen. He comforts himself with those who feed his need for praise and attention, nodding their heads up and down when he speaks. These minions are unable to say the emperor has no clothes.
Last week, as the congressional impeachment inquiry rumbled toward the two-month mark, a senior member of the administration asked me, “Why doesn’t the press want to hear what the president has to say?” We do. But we still reserve the right to ask a question and expect an honest answer. Or at least a cogent one.
Moreover, when the president is dedicated to destroying relations with the press and the public, it’s ridiculous to take seriously any kind of expressed concern for better press relations. I’ll happily listen to whatever Trump says and would appreciate the opportunity to ask him my questions face-to-face. So far my revolutionary idea has found no favor at the White House, where the president has ended briefings in favor of spoon-fed propaganda to be regurgitated as the president demands.
By killing the press briefing, Trump is trying to kill independent reporting and independent thought. It’s having other effects.
Where other administrations honed their message from the interaction with the public via the press, Donald Trump scorns any give-and-take and thus has not learned much more than what he brought with him when he became president. The best of presidents cannot hope to be effective without learning through interaction and shared information. Trump not only is ineffective but caught in a catchphrase/soundbite loop. Unable to get out of his own head, he instead tries to suck everyone into his fictional reality—or at least take advantage of them.
The Republicans in the House and Senate are along for the ride because they fear if they get off then someone from their own party will challenge and perhaps beat them in the next primary. There are no High Noon Gary Cooper types in the GOP arena; they’re just a bunch of frightened politicians shackled to Satan on a hell ride they can’t flee and cannot embrace. These are the tortured souls like Lindsey Graham, who once worshipped John McCain but now is a Ronin who sold his services to a lesser warlord instead of committing political seppuku. A man with no honor. Just the kind of guy Trump enjoys for a mid-afternoon snack.
The lack of daily briefings in essence severs the president from the American public. Presidents cannot by the very nature of their jobs interact with the millions of people they govern on any meaningful or continuous basis—except through the White House Press Corps.
This stalwart group is composed of a wide variety of people from all over the world. Some are friendly to the president. Some are unfriendly. There are fringe players, network players, scribes, columnists, young, old, white, black, male, female, LBGTQ—a veritable cornucopia of humanity. Their questions highlight the concerns of the governed. Trump doesn’t care. He’d rather push wild conspiracies than admit the truth that his press policies hurt even his friends in the press. Above all he really cannot answer most questions and doesn’t want anyone speaking for him.
Ultimately the lack of a daily briefing at the White House is a deeper loss to the president than to the press. The need for news doesn’t abate. Something will fill the hole. But the president has abandoned rational discourse for vitriol and suffers for it. And the American people, who are being divided and clubbed into submission by a bully who has no respect for American ideals, suffer the most.
The ongoing narrative offered by the president regarding impeachment is thus seen more clearly through the prism of a lack of press briefings. By tweeting out a narrative and watching the “likes” come in, the president and members of his administration feel some sense of comfort. But reality is a harsh mistress and the president would, with daily public interaction in a briefing room, better take the pulse of a nation whose legislative branch is currently investigating him for impeachment.
But Trump doesn’t get it. He believes he doesn’t need the feedback and he can dictate reality to the rest of us. The combination of hubris and ignorance could prove to be his undoing.