Tag Archives: White House press corps

media news

Here’s how you brief the press

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If I could, I would direct this brief message to the four people who served as press secretary during Donald Trump’s term as president.

They are, in order, Sean Spicer, Sara H. Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany. They all fluffed the job of briefing the press on issues relating to the presidency; indeed, Grisham didn’t conduct a single briefing before she quit to join the first lady’s staff. They should take heed of the manner that the current press flack, Jen Psaki, is doing her job on behalf of President Biden.

To be sure — and to be fair — the press gathered in front of Psaki has been fairly tame in tossing questions at her. There hasn’t been the in-your-face kind of interrogation we saw so often during the Trump years. Then again, the media haven’t been lied to as baldly and blatantly as they were for the previous four years.

Do you remember Sean Spicer’s initial press briefing? Here’s a reminder: He told the country that Donald Trump delivered his inaugural speech before the largest crowd in presidential inaugural history. Except that it wasn’t the largest crowd. It was a fraction of the size of either of President Barack Obama’s inaugural audiences.

So … there you go. Right out of the chute, the White House press flack for Donald Trump lied to the public, more than likely at the behest of Donald Trump his own self.

You will not hear, I am willing to wager, President Biden label the media as the “enemy of the people.” Donald Trump played the media like a fiddle before he was elected, then demonized them when they questioned him aggressively about the lies he continued to spew.

Joe Biden’s press secretary — Jen Psaki — is restoring the value of the White House press briefings.

media news

Sanders’s WH legacy? The destruction of the press office

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving the White House with a remarkably dubious legacy. She has played a major role in destroying the office she is about to vacate: the office of White House press secretary.

Sanders has quit conducting press briefings. She no longer stands before the press corps and answers questions. No doubt some of those questions are aggressive, even hostile. The media have been declared “the enemy of the people” by Sanders’s boss, Donald Trump.

Sanders’s then had to face that group and attempt to convey presidential policy. She did a lousy job of lying on behalf of the president. For that matter, Sanders can be “credited” with being “transparent,” if you want to call it that. She lied quite openly, even in the face of evidence that contradicted her directly.

Sure, she got beat up. Then again, so did a lot of press secretaries over many previous administrations. I wrote a blog post earlier today about one of her predecessors, George E. Christian, who served as press secretary during President Johnson’s second term. The press savaged Christian, too, over the conduct of the Vietnam War. Did that man shirk his duty? Did he ever stop delivering regular press briefings? No. He answered the call.

Sanders chickened out.

Now she’s about to be gone. Who will the president appoint to succeed this individual? My hope would be someone who would have the fortitude and the character to do his or her job, which is report the truth to the media, which then would report it all the public.

I have little faith that Donald Trump will do the right thing.

media news

WH press flack: tailor-made for her job

Well now. What do you think about this?

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report on his probe of The Russia Thing and alleged collusion and obstruction has disclosed that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is good at her job as White House press secretary.

By that I mean she is able to lie with a straight face. Just like her boss, the president of the United States.

It turns out that Mueller determined that Sanders lied when she told reporters that Trump fired FBI director James Comey because the FBI boss had lost credibility within the agency he led.

Her pants shoulda caught fire!

Lying ain’t cool

Comey had not lost any trust among his senior aides or rank-and-file agents. Trump fired him because he wouldn’t pledge loyalty to the president and wouldn’t go soft on his investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government operatives.

It turns out, too, that Sanders’s predecessor as White House flack, Sean Spicer, also lied about Comey’s performance as FBI director. So the two of them — Spicer and Sanders — appeared to do the president’s bidding.

The press secretary is ostensibly charged with telling the media the truth about what the executive branch of government is doing on our behalf. The press adviser talks to the media. He or she speaks for the president. The media then report to the nation and the world what the press secretary says on the president’s behalf. Yes, they question the press secretary, seeking answers to key questions.

The stories emanating from the White House, the press office and the Justice Department are getting murkier by the hour as the nation starts to digest the contents of the Mueller report.

We appear to be getting a clearer picture, though, of the individual who serves as spokeswoman for the president of the United States. Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies with the best of ’em.

media news, national news

Return the press pass to CNN’s White House reporter

I’ll concede that Jim Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, is a show-off who brims with misplaced self-importance.

He also is a journalist who works for a legitimate news-gathering organization — who has been singled out unfairly by the president of the United States.

The White House yanked Acosta’s press credentials. Why? It said initially he put his hands on a young intern who sought to grab a microphone out of Acosta’s hands while he was asking the president a question.

I watch the incident live as it happened. Then I saw it again, and again. He didn’t do anything of the sort. Now the White House is yammering a different line, that Acosta was too persistent in his questioning.

Give me a break!

The White House, let alone the president of the United States, cannot put government pressure on a media organization by this kind of bullying. That’s what they’re doing in the White House. They are trying to bully and intimidate the media, which seek to get answers on all manner of government policy.

CNN has sued the White House, protesting the decision to rescind the reporter’s press pass.

Acosta is known as an aggressive reporter. He is far from the first or even the worst. Do you remember how Sam Donaldson would tangle with President Reagan? Or how about when Dan Rather would get under President Nixon’s thin skin? Did either of those presidents yank their press credentials? No. They sucked it up. They answered their questions and let the reporters and their employers chronicle their answers.

Trump talks like some kind of tough guy. He isn’t. He demonstrates profound weakness by banishing an aggressive reporter, whose job is to ask difficult questions.

The president’s job requires him to provide answers.

national news

Trump dukes it out with the media … and the GOP losers

Donald John “Pugilist in Chief” Trump stood before the media and was in a fightin’ mood, to be sure.

Not only did he take on the media, calling them “unfair,” “rude,” “racist,” and all together comprising nasty individuals working for equally nasty organizations, he decided to call out Republican lawmakers who lost their re-election bids in the midterm election.

CNN’s Jim Acosta – of course! – was the president’s first target. Acosta sought to ask Trump a follow-up question, the president told him to sit down, calling him and his network a failure. A White House aide then sought to take the microphone from Acosta.

It only got worse from there.

Trump routinely interrupted reporters in the middle of their questions. He battled with them over what he says are their unfair and unfavorable coverage.

PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, an African-American reporter, was accused of asking Trump a “racist” question because she inquired about the way he has characterized the “caravan” moving slowly north from Latin America.

But he wasn’t done once he got through his usual media-bashing routine.

The president of the United States called out – by name! – a list of Republican lawmakers who he said failed to embrace him. They paid the price, according to Trump, by losing their re-election bid.

Good grief, dude! It’s one thing to lump a group of politicians together, calling out the group for their alleged lack of fealty to the president. It’s quite another to single them out by name, to hold them up as examples.

Is this the same guy who said he wanted to “unify” the country, who pledged to seek “peace and harmony”? Yep, it is. Believe … or not!

Donald Trump, media news

No ‘guarantee’? So, what is the problem?

I feel the need to give White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders the benefit of the doubt on her latest skirmish with the press corps/”enemy of the people.”

She was pressed this week about whether she could “guarantee” that there would be no tape recordings of Donald J. Trump using the n-word in conversation.

Sanders said she couldn’t “guarantee” such a thing. Some in the media have gone a bit catatonic in their response to what I thought was a realistic answer. They have wondered how or why she couldn’t — or wouldn’t — offer a direct answer to a direct question.

Consider a couple of factors here.

First, as press secretary, Sanders very well might not know every tiny detail of every little occurrence within the West Wing.

Second, she serves in a presidential administration led by a pathological liar. Donald Trump cannot tell the truth to anyone, or so it appears, at least to chumps like me. I am quite certain Sanders didn’t intend to question the president’s veracity by making her “no guarantee” declaration.

Sure, Trump denies ever using the n-word. He says it’s not in his vocabulary. Do you believe him? I … do … not!

However, her answer sounded to my ears to be about the most honest response she has offered while speaking for the president.

media news

Wolf controversy overshadows media’s good work

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It’s a shame that a foul-mouthed comedian’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner has overshadowed much of what the crowd was there to do.

They came to honor those who work in the media, who cover the news and report to the public the happenings of the federal government, its elected officials and appointed staff.

The media are not, in the words of Donald J. Trump — who skipped the dinner for the second consecutive year — the “enemy of the American people.” Far from it. They are the protectors of transparency, accountability and government integrity.

Many media outlets were honored. CNN, for example, received a high honor for its work reporting on the dossier that emerged revealing potential connections between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian government operatives seeking to meddle in our 2016 presidential election.

The correspondents dinner focus should be on those individuals and organizations. Instead, we’re arguing from coast to coast over whether comedian Michelle Wolf crossed the line of decency in her scathing criticism of the president and his senior staff members.

For the record … she did.

The media, though, are doing the job the U.S. Constitution empowers them to do — without government interference, bullying, intimidation or threats.

I hope to be done with the Michelle Wolf travesty.

The media that are reporting on the presidency and the rest of the government will continue to earn my undying pride and praise when they do well.

International news, national news, political news

Press flack keeps insulting the public’s intelligence

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fielded a direct question today from a member of the White House press corps: Is Russia a friend or foe of the United States?

Her answer defies all logic and it insults the intelligence of Americans across the board.

Sanders said “it is up to the Russians to decide” if they are going to be friendly or unfriendly toward the United States. Such a goofy response causes many of us out here to say: What the … is she talking about?

I need to remind Sanders what her boss, Donald John Trump, used to say about “identifying our enemies.” While running for president, Trump excoriated President Barack Obama for refusing to identify “Muslim terrorists” by name. Obama’s response was that we are not at war with Islam, but we are at war with those who are mass murderers of Muslims.

Why, then, does the current president identify Russia as a supreme foe of this country? Why does his press flack sing from the White House song book that refuses to identify our adversary — by name!

The Russians have all but declared war on our electoral system. They have sown discord, dismay and discontent among Americans, many of whom have lost total and unvarnished faith in our nation’s election system.

The Russians and their president, Vladimir Putin, are not our friends. Putin is a trained spook. He once ran the Soviet Union’s spy agency. He is, in the words of former Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly, “a killer.” Putin has sanctioned the murder of journalists and anyone who dissents from his public policy.

This man is a friend? It is up to the Russians to “decide” if they are our friend?

Listen up, young lady: You insult our intelligence constantly by spouting such idiocy.

media news

Yes, the White House is at ‘war’ with the media

White House press secretaries have a singular mission, which is to convey the message of the president to the American public.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now performing that task to mixed reviews. Those who support Donald Trump’s agenda applaud her; those (of us) who don’t, well, we jeer her.

I’ll offer this jeer, therefore, to Sanders for saying that the White House is not “at war” with the media. Sure thing, Mme. Press Secretary.

Then, why does the president declare that the media are “the enemy of the American people”? Why does he keep insisting that media reports he finds objectionable come from what he refers to as “fake media”? Why does he disparage reporters individually, by name, along with their organizations?

Good grief, Sarah! The president declared war on the media long ago. The first press flack, Sean Spicer, fired the first barrage on Day One of the Trump administration when he challenged the media reporting of the size of the Trump inaugural crowd!

I am pretty certain the media believe they are in a state of “war” with the administration. Whether the White House’s “fine-tuned machine” believes it ignores what many of the rest of us realized long ago.

Sanders took part in a discussion of White House media relations with Mike McCurry, press secretary for the Clinton administration. McCurry, not surprisingly, took issue with Sanders’s assertion that there is no warfare taking place. He said the White House criticizes media reporting “every day,” which he considers to be a form of media war.

Read The Hill’s story here.

I am one of those former media guys who knows White House combat with the press when he sees it.

Thus, I believe Sarah Sanders is, um, quite wrong while she parrots the White House line on its relationship with the media.

media news

Trump declines to mingle with ‘the enemy’

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We might have seen this one coming.

Donald J. Trump announced today he won’t attend the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, an event that attracts noted journalists, assorted celebrities and politicians — and usually features a blistering bit of self-deprecation and jabs at others from the president of the United States.

It’s a whole lot of fun for those who attend. At least it’s supposed to be fun.

Trump, though, will forgo the event. “I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Is anyone surprised? Really? I didn’t think so. Trump, after all, has labeled the media the “enemy of the people.” Why would he want to mingle with such “dishonest” individuals and organizations?

The president has gone on the warpath against the mainstream media, going so far as to ban certain media organizations from attending routine White House press briefings. He has called them “fake news” outlets. He has accused the media of making stories up, of hiding their sources and attribution.

It is all — if I may borrow a term — “unpresidented” of the president to say these things about the media.

However, the White House Correspondents Dinner has been notable at many levels for many years. Perhaps the most notable event occurred in 2011, when then-President Obama joked about Trump — who was in the audience — concocting all sorts of conspiracy theories, starting with whether the president was born in the U.S. of A. Trump, at the time a mere real estate mogul and reality TV celebrity, took the ribbing stone-faced

What we didn’t know at the time, of course, was that earlier that day Obama had approved the commando mission to kill Osama bin Laden, who was holed up in a Pakistan compound. The president  carried on as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

The dinner, which occurs on April 29, will no doubt include plenty of barbs tossed at the president from the podium.

I’m willing to consider taking bets on whether Trump unloads via Twitter in response when they start flying at him. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, either.