Trump's Press Secretary Claims 'This Is A Very Transparent And Open White House'
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Thursday boasted, with no hint of irony, about the Trump administration’s accessibility to the media ― which the president routinely disparages and calls “fake news.”
In an interview with Fox Business’ Trish Regan, Grisham also confirmed there were no plans to reintroduce daily White House press briefings ― which ceased under the tenure of her predecessor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“If the president ever wants me to go out and do a briefing ― if there is a time when we have a very important topic that we need to go out there and announce, of course, we can do a briefing,” said Grisham, who earlier in the day caused controversy by defending Trump’s description of his Republican critics as “human scum.”
“I am accessible and my team is accessible to the media 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in every other way you can imagine,” Grisham continued. “We do interviews, there’s emails, texts, phone calls.
“But also, as I’ve said many times, the president is his best spokesperson and he is so accessible to the press,” Grisham claimed. “They may not like his answers or what he says. But this is a very transparent and open White House. And so just because somebody is not out at a podium, that doesn’t mean we’re not answering questions.”
Grisham last month claimed reporters used the now-defunct daily briefings “to get famous,” an assertion that was heavily panned by CNN’s Anderson Cooper and other journalists.
“I hate to break it to her, TV reporters are already on TV. So no need to try to get on TV, because that’s where they work, on TV,” Cooper said in a segment last week that went viral. “It’s tough to grasp, but it’s actually how the entire TV medium works. I am on TV right now. Newspaper reporters, they are covering the White House, so they probably already made a name for themselves. You know what I mean?”
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that Trump planned to order federal agencies to cancel their subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post. Grisham was quoted as saying it would save hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
