Tag: ditch the press

Trump leaves press pool behind at National Christmas Tree lighting

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President Trump on Wednesday departed the National Christmas Tree lighting event without White House staff notifying a pool of reporters assigned to monitor the president’s movements of his whereabouts following a logistical mixup.

Members of the protective press pool – a group of reporters assigned to remain with the president and document his activities – indicated shortly after 6:30 p.m. that Trump had returned to the White House without any warning or comment from staffers.

Reporters were briefly held at the Ellipse outside the White House without any immediate indication of where the president had gone. They were later notified that Trump had returned to the White House via motorcade without the press pool in tow.

Members of the press pool protested the situation on Twitter.

[The Hill]

Tillerson Holds a Press Conference Without U.S. Media

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a news conference with the Saudi foreign minister in Riyadh on Sunday, but he left the American media behind.

State Department spokesperson R.C. Hammond said Tillerson — who was traveling with Donald Trump on his first foreign trip as president — was invited at the last minute to participate in a news conference with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir. Only foreign media were invited.

“Regrettably, there was not enough time to alert or make arrangements for U.S. media to participate. Under different circumstances, U.S. media would have been alerted,” Hammond said, in a rare admission of an error by the administration. “Steps were immediately taken to ensure a transcript could be produced and distributed to reporters. Ideally, members of the U.S. press corps should have had the option to attend the press conference and ask questions.”

Tillerson and Jubeir had taken a few questions from U.S. reporters on the trip on Saturday. Tillerson is also now expected to speak to reporters on Air Force One en route to Israel on Monday.

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said U.S. reporters “were not excluded at all” and that Tillerson had agreed to join the news conference “on the spot.”

A rushed transcript by the Daily Mail’s David Martosko was sent out to the White House pool on Sunday, transcribed from Saudi TV. The State Department later sent out an official transcript to the entire press corps.

The U.S. secretary of state has at times had a strained relationship with the reporters who cover him. The State Department has not been holding regular daily press briefings, as previous administrations did, and on his first trip to Asia, Tillerson did not take any pool reporters, instead cherry-picking a White House reporter from the conservative-leaning viral news site Independent Journal Review for an exclusive interview.

The reporter did not act as a pool reporter, sharing material with other news outlets, but did publish the transcript of her interview, along with a longer feature piece on Tillerson. In that interview, Tillerson was less than enthusiastic about media access and said the status of pool reporters would be “trip dependent.” On his next trip, Tillerson allowed two reporters acting as a pool to accompany him.

[Politico]

Trump’s Meeting With Russian Officials Was Closed To Media — Except Russian Media

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President Donald Trump’s meeting Wednesday morning with two top Russian officials was closed to all press — except, apparently, official government photographers.

Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, along with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.

“The Lavrov meeting was closed to the press and the only visual account we have of it thus far is via handout photos from the Russian government,” The Hill’s Jordan Fabian wrote in a pool report Wednesday morning. “Those images show Trump also met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.”

Gizmodo’s Matt Novak noted on Twitter that Getty wire images of the meeting were credited to TASS, which is commonly described as state-run or state-owned.

Fabian later reported that an unnamed White House official told him: “On background, our official photographer and their official photographer were present, that’s it.”

The Associated Press noted that photos it distributed from the meeting were government hand-outs and credited the Russian Foreign Ministry, though it did not list the photographer Alexander Shcherbak, as Getty did.

White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to TPM’s questions about the press arrangement Wednesday. TASS’ Washington bureau chief, Andrei Sitov, told TPM that no one from his bureau was present at the meeting.

“Apparently the TASS person was admitted at the request of the Russian Foreign Ministry as the official photographer for the Russian side,” Sitov added in a later email. “He is permanently assigned to cover FM Lavrov. His pictures from the meeting are available at the Russian FM’s Flickr. I was not even aware of this.” The Foreign Ministry’s Flickr page can be found here.

The White House published it’s own official readout of the meeting:

President Donald J. Trump met today with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia, following on the visit of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow last month. President Trump emphasized the need to work together to end the conflict in Syria, in particular, underscoring the need for Russia to rein in the Assad regime, Iran, and Iranian proxies. The President raised Ukraine, and expressed his Administration’s commitment to remain engaged in resolving the conflict and stressed Russia’s responsibility to fully implement the Minsk agreements. He also raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. The President further emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia.

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Tillerson plans to travel without press

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Veteran journalists who cover the State Department say they’ve never seen anything like it.

The new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has been all but silent in his first month on the job. And he is planning on traveling to Asia next week without the traditional coterie of traveling press with him.

Journalists are strenuously objecting to the plan. But there is no indication that Tillerson is going to reverse course. The State Department may allow one hand-picked journalist to tag along, but the details are unknown.

On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that Tillerson was looking to save money by taking a smaller plane without room for reporters.

However, news outlets normally pay for their reporters’ seats, compensating the government for the expenses.

Past secretaries normally flew with the so-called press “pool” as a matter of course, but the Trump administration seemingly wants that to stop.

Tillerson was similarly press-averse while running ExxonMobil, according to Steve Coll, who authored “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.” Tillerson never granted him an interview for the book.

Now, as secretary of state, Tillerson has not given any interviews. He has appeared in photo ops with visiting dignitaries, but he has ignored the questions that reporters have tried to ask.

“Still no answers from secretary of state Rex Tillerson,” NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said after one of her attempts.

“It’s not that previous secretaries didn’t sometimes duck questions. But Mr. Tillerson has been shockingly inaccessible since he was sworn in last month. On top of questionless photo ops, there have been no news conferences and no Sunday talk show appearances,” former Reuters diplomatic corespondent Carol Giacomo, now a member of the New York Times editorial board, wrote on Friday.

Coll called Tillerson’s silent approach to the job “strange.”

“It’s such a departure of the life of the State Department,” he said. “The secretary of state is the most important voice, after the president, representing the United States.”

Secretaries normally see interviews and press conferences as ways to articulate foreign policy to external audiences and address internal audiences at the same time.

“Kerry, Clinton, Rice, Powell, Albright — all very formidable public figures — gained influence inside the administration by taking advantage of their own bully pulpit,” Coll said.

But Tillerson’s approach has been different in many ways. Keeping his distance from the press is just one example.

A dozen Washington bureau chiefs and editors, including representatives from CNN, sent a letter to the State Department earlier this week urging the secretary to make arrangements for “pool” travel.

“Not only does this situation leave the public narrative of the meetings up to the Chinese foreign ministry as well as Korea’s and Japan’s, but it gives the American people no window whatsoever into the views and actions of the nation’s leaders,” the editors wrote. “And the offer to help those reporters who want to travel unilaterally is wholly unrealistic, given the commercial flight schedules, visa issues and no guarantee of access once they are there.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper commented on the matter on Twitter: “Not bringing press on a trip like that is unusual & insulting to any American who is looking for anything but a state-run version of events.”

MSNBC anchor Greta Van Susteren also weighed in: “Tillerson should take media on trip to Asia — Americans want to know and we pay his salary and his staff and plane.”

Voice of America correspondent Steve Herman replied to her tweet and added: “And it’s not a free ride for media. We reimburse government for the travel costs.”

Up until this week, the State Department had not held an on-camera briefing since inauguration day — a highly unusual break from tradition.

The briefings are normally another way for the State Department to inform the public about foreign policy. This week, there were two on-camera briefings and two off-camera conference calls.

Tillerson has yet to name a press secretary.

(h/t CNN)

Trump Attends Private Mar-a-Lago Event Without Telling Press Corps

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President Trump attended a private fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday evening, without informing the press corps that follows him and reports on his movements.

Trump made an unexpected stop at a fundraiser for Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute held at his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., the Washington Post reported.

The event was not on his schedule.

A video posted on Instagram shows Trump arriving at the private fundraiser, where he was met with cheers. More than 800 people attended the event, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Sunday.

Trump has visited Mar-a-Lago for three straight weekends. Last weekend, Trump and Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe scrambled to respond to a North Korean missile test while guests in the public dining room looked on.

Memberships for Trump’s resort have doubled to $200,000 a year since Trump won the election.

Students at Harvard Medical School demanded the Saturday fundraiser be held elsewhere last month. The students’ demands came right after Trump issued a controversial executive order on immigration and refugees, which the students argued threatened practicing doctors.

The cancer institute ended up holding the event since “contracts have been signed, and a large number of people have committed to attend,” the institute said in a statement.

(h/t The Hill)

Black Plastic Covers Windows, Blocking Reporters’ Views of Trump Golfing

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Reporters who are supposed to keep an eye on President Trump couldn’t see him Saturday morning.

White House reporters tasked with covering Trump tweeted they were holed up in a clubhouse basement of the luxurious Trump National Jupiter Golf Club & Spa.

That wouldn’t be so bad if the windows and doors weren’t covered with black plastic, blocking all views of the outside world, including Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the golf course.

“Trump’s press corps has been placed in a basement suite at Jupiter golf club,” tweeted Jennifer Jacobs, a White House reporter for Bloomberg. “Black plastic over windows to give Trump privacy as he golfs.”

Later, Jacobs tweeted that Japanese reporters were also in the room, and it wasn’t clear if “US side or Japan side vetoed golf pix.”

Jill Colvin of the Associated Press also tweeted a picture of the doors covered with black plastic. Twitter followers urged the reporters to rip down the plastic or tear peep holes in it.

Trump had set aside two days for Abe’s visit, including golf time. The two headed to the Trump National Jupiter Gold Club & Spa Saturday morning.

Once there, the traveling press pool was escorted into the clubhouse and downstairs into what was supposed to be a room to file stories. That’s when they saw the blackout. “The door and windows are covered with black plastic so we can’t see out,” the official White House pool report stated. The reporters were told they would be there for awhile, according to press pool reports.

And awhile it was according to Julie Dash, a White House reporter for the New York Times, who tweeted in the afternoon that reporters were “staring at black plastic-covered windows” when Trump and Abe arrived to golf.

Later in the day, Trump posted a picture on Facebook and Instagram of the two of them golfing.

Meanwhile, reporters were able to follow first lady Melania Trump and Abe’s wife, Akie, who spent the morning touring the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Palm Beach County.

Trump met Friday in the Oval Office with Abe. After a meeting, working lunch and news conference, Trump and Abe boarded Air Force One for a trip to the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

“Melania and I are hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Mrs. Abe at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. They are a wonderful couple!’’ Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

(h/t USA Today)

Trump Ditches Press Again, This Time For Golf Outing

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President-elect Donald Trump played golf at his course about 13 miles north of his Palm Beach resort Saturday.

What time he left Mar-a-Lago, what time he arrived at Trump National in Jupiter, who he met or played with once there, what time he was finished and whether there were any incidents along the way were not immediately clear, as he ditched the reporters assigned to cover him for the day.

“It was a last-minute decision to play golf, nothing more,” Trump travel aide Stephanie Grisham said.

Presidents, presidents-elect and major party presidential nominees in recent decades have been accompanied everywhere by a group of print, online, wire service and broadcast reporters, a rotating “pool” that shares that information for use by all their colleagues. That tradition, though, was broken during the campaign by Trump, who largely refused to allow members of the press to travel on his personal jetliner, forcing the use of a second plane.

The resulting logistical complications sometimes meant pool reporters ― who often paid thousands of dollars per day for air travel ― were unable to arrive at his campaign events until after he had taken the stage. Trump also refused to take reporters to fundraiser locations. Candidate in both parties had made a practice of this, including releasing information about the hosts, the number of attendees and the amount collected.

Not long after the election, Trump went to a New York City restaurant ― with a full Secret Service motorcade ― without notifying his press pool. Reporters on call that evening learned of his visit because of a restaurant patron’s tweet that he was there, and then the reporters scrambled to get there too.

Trump was scheduled to attend a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, which, according to a Politico report, has sold 800 tickets at more than $500 each. Unlike political fundraisers for political parties, the profits from the New Year’s Eve party were expected to flow directly to Trump, who owns the hotel.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told Politico that he was not concerned that ticket buyers might be trying to purchase access to the soon-to-be-president. “This is an annual celebratory event at the private club, like others that have continued to occur since the election. Additionally, the president cannot and does not have a conflict,” Hicks told Politico.

(h/t Huffington Post)