No doubt you’ve noticed that President Trump has replaced traditional press briefings inside the White House with personal cattle calls outside on the South Lawn.
His version features correspondents corralled inside a roped off area – looking not so much like reporters in a gaggle as like pigs in a pen. There they wait – come rain or shine – for him to stop by on his way to his helicopter to selectively bark canned answers to their questions. And bark is the operative word; after all, the correspondents themselves have must to be (barely) heard over the blare of the helicopter revving up to take off.
This is just one of the many ways Trump has debased not just the presidency but practically everyone associated with it, hence the book Everything Trump Touches Dies.
But I urge the White House Correspondents’ Association to revive traditional briefings. Because this is the only way its correspondents can survive his presidency with a little of their professional dignity intact.
It need only inform Trump that its members will no longer stand for this charade. Further, that if he wants to meet the press, he will have to do so under professional conditions in the Brady Room, which was specifically designed for White House briefings.
Granted, Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a mockery of that room by acting more like Baghdad Bob (i.e., by puppeting Trump’s lies) than a traditional White House press secretary.
But part of restoring normalcy to the presidency is having regularly scheduled briefings in that room. And, if this carnival barker’s overweening narcissism compels him to give them himself, so be it.
Besides, the irony cannot be lost on anyone that his new press secretary seems more press shy than Greta Garbo. Her name…? Exactly.