For a man who loves the media spotlight, U.S. President Donald Trump has been wary of talking to reporters by himself.
You can use one finger to count the number of times he has held a solo presidential press conference during his first 14 months in office. Instead, journalists are left to shout at Trump during photo ops, never sure if they’ll get an answer before being ushered out of the room.
That’s unusual for any U.S. president.
Barack Obama held 11 solo press conferences during his first year, George W. Bush held five, and Bill Clinton had 12, according to data from the American Presidency Project at the University of California.
Trump has appeared at more than 20 joint news conferences with other world leaders, which is about average, but those events typically only allow for one or two questions for the president, and the White House decides who asks them.
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Maybe the administration feels there’s no upside to taking too many questions. After all, extended face time with the entirety of the White House press corps just hasn’t gone particularly well for Trump.
The one-and-only official press conference on Feb. 16, 2017, lasted an exhausting 77 minutes, generated headlines around the world, and gave the impression of a new American leader who was anything but presidential.
The event was actually to announce a new nominee for labor secretary, but no one remembered that by the time it was all over. For more than an hour, Trump took shots at the media, using the phrase “fake news” several times, according to the transcript.
He falsely claimed to have the largest Electoral College victory since Ronald Reagan.
He slammed the Russia probe, saying “you can talk all you want about Russia, which was all a fake news, fabricated deal to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats.”
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When asked about the leaks plaguing his young administration he offered the head-scratching explanation that “the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.”
Since then, the strategy has been to hunker down and communicate only when Trump wants to.
Trump will occasionally stop to speak with reporters on the White House lawn, on Air Force One, or during a photo op, but those interactions are only with a very small group of reporters known as the “press pool.”
Questions are cut-off the moment Trump decides to walk away — if he takes them at all.
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Despite having the ability to walk down the hall from the oval office to the press briefing room, Trump has only ever appeared in front of reporters once, in a pre-taped message.
Pre-arranged interviews are now limited to Trump-friendly outlets like Fox News or the Christian Broadcasting Network — the kinds of places where he won’t exactly face tough questions.
You may wonder why it matters. So what if the president limits his media appearances? He still puts himself out there. He sends tweets, and there’s a White House briefing almost every day.
But in reality, Trump and those around him have built a system where he can duck most of the toughest questions surrounding the things he does, and everything going on in the world. Stormy Daniels? The Russia probe? Business conflicts? There’s just no opportunity to get a clear answer about any of it.
Let’s take one example: Trump has spent days attacking Amazon in a series of tweets, claiming the company is not taxed fairly and exploits the U.S. postal service.
That’s just not true, but his comments still moved the markets, and sent Amazon’s share price tumbling.
The president is either making things up as part of a feud with a rival billionaire who also happens to own the Washington Post, or he is simply ill-informed. Either way, he’s hurting a company that employs half a million people.
During a photo op with the leaders of three Baltic nations, Trump was asked why.
He repeated the same false claims about Amazon that he made over Twitter, and then asked reporters to leave the room before anyone could ask a follow-up question or challenge his statements.
How is that good for anyone? How is that good for America?
Accountability is a cornerstone of any healthy democracy — even Russian president Vladimir Putin holds a yearly free-for-all with reporters. Putin spends hours answering questions, even if it is just once a year.
But not Donald Trump.
It’s all a bit rich when you flash-back to the 2016 campaign and remember that candidate-Trump loved to attack Hillary Clinton for the exact same things.
For the record, she went 278 days without a formal news conference.
As of April 3, Trump is at 411 days without a press conference, and counting, and the questions keep piling up.
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