Trump tweetstorms wash away White House press briefings
WASHINGTON — Out: White House press briefings and presidential interviews. In: tweet-storms and political rallies.
President Donald Trump has swapped traditional forms of White House transparency for direct but one-way communication through Twitter and speeches to friendly audiences.
As he heads to Iowa on Wednesday for his fifth political rally while in office, Trump is reducing the importance of White House 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, 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.