Donald Trump Cancel Daily White House Press Briefings

Photo: Susan Walsh/AP Images.

In a barrage of tweets posted on Friday, President Donald Trump threw out a radical suggestion.

Because what he says and what gets relayed in press conferences so often don't line up, the president proposed the cancellation of "all future press briefings," according to ABC News.

"We don’t have press conferences," President Trump suggested during an interview with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro. "We just don’t have them. Unless I have them every two weeks and do it myself. We don’t have them. I think it's a good idea."

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Many members of the press assumed that the president's Twitter rant stemmed from the inconsistencies in the situation surrounding the firing of FBI Director James Comey, which has developed into a sort-of he-said, he-said situation with conflicting information from all sides.

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President Trump continued to toss out ideas for reforming the current press conference protocol, adding that he thinks press secretary Sean Spicer is a "wonderful human being" that gets unfairly lampooned by the media. Trump associates also suggested that the press conferences move out of the White House entirely, noting that the Eisenhower Executive Office Building would be a better place for the updates. He added that distributing written updates would be a great way to inform the public instead of the daily briefing.

Twitter users quickly fired back at President Trump's idea of shutting down the press conferences, noting that the media — and by extension, the general public — has a right to have access to the White House and the happenings within it.

.@JoeConchaTV: When you take away the press briefing, the only people that suffer are the American ppl, because they're not being informed. pic.twitter.com/LZ9RjxO70h
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 13, 2017

White House Correspondents' Association statement on press briefings. pic.twitter.com/qAzrzehENL
— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) May 12, 2017

@realDonaldTrump If Trump starts with dismantling the First Amendment, there's no telling how far he will go.
— Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) May 12, 2017

@realDonaldTrump The briefings are for our benefit not yours. If your leadership was ethical, transparent & not self-serving,they could handle the questions.
— Marilyn Williams (@JoyMWilliams) May 13, 2017

@realDonaldTrump On the other hand, you could just tell the truth, settle on one consistent story, and find a spokesperson capable of speaking accurately.
— MatthewDicks (@MatthewDicks) May 12, 2017

@realDonaldTrump May I suggest questions submitted and answered via Twitter. A perfect record and we distribute to the world not just those with a TV
— Anthony Noto (@anthonynoto) May 12, 2017

@realDonaldTrump No matter what you do Mr. Trump a good journalist will get the job done. There will be more leakers w/ info, documents, etc.
— Rebecca Aguilar (@RebeccaAguilar) May 13, 2017

The White House staff said in a statement that written updates "would reduce accountability, transparency, and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the U.S. system, no political figure is above being questioned." That would, according to the administration, also cut down on inconsistencies, such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders statement on Thursday, which didn't exactly align with an interview Trump had with Lester Holt later the same day. Forbes adds that Trump's threat of cancellation won't likely materialize, especially since he's obsessed with media coverage and noted back in April that Spicer "gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in."

Trump will never cancel the daily press briefing because it gets good ratings, which is the only metric he cares about.
— Brian Colligan (@briancolligan) May 12, 2017

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