How Canceling White House Press Briefings Is Now Helping Trump Fight Impeachment

How Canceling White House Press Briefings Is Now Helping Trump Fight Impeachment
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/86883

It's been nearly 100 days since Donald Trump appointed Stephanie Grisham to be the new White House press secretary, and during that time she has refused to hold a single press briefing. Ripping up decades of protocol and giving up on even the appearance of caring about transparency, the White House now most often communicates with journalists by allowing them to shout half-heard questions at Trump as he makes his way to the Marine One helicopter.

Gutting the White House press briefings is all part of a larger, historic, and incremental effort by the Trump administration to lock out the press—and, by extension, the public—from the government’s official duties and business. Now the implications are being felt as Trump is mired in an impeachment crisis. And for the White House, not hosting press briefings is a very good thing.

<<snip>>

That's why having public press briefings is even more necessary. Yet under this Republican administration, the press did nothing when former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders faded them from existence, and they did nothing when her successor, Stephanie Grisham, refused to even acknowledge the briefings. And news organizations did nothing when Grisham explained that Trump had canceled the press briefings because reporters were being too darn mean.

"They weren’t being good to his people. And he doesn’t like that. He’s very loyal to his people, and he put a stop to it,” she told Fox News last month, as if demurring to White House press secretaries was the job of Beltway journalists.

Unfortunately, the disappearing press briefings became inevitable when the major news organizations failed to stand up to the Trump White House, and instead meekly stood aside and watched the Q&A’s get gutted. Friendly reminder: When the Obama White House tweaked an access policy in a way news organizations didn’t like, they instantly staged a revolt by indignantly, and collectively, demanding a meeting with Democratic administration officials to fix the problem.

There were no emergency meetings called by news organizations when it became obvious the Trump White House press briefings were being extinguished. And today, as impeachment engulfs the president, Republicans are very happy the briefings no longer exist.