A Presidential press conference ... or not

You have forgotten the Presidency belongs to the American people, not Donald J. Trump.

You and I are repeating ourselves. Goodbye, its been fun.

 

Nikki Haley held a press conference yesterday. She managed the conference in a masterly way, even when asked questions by unfriendly reporters. She was extremely professional and maintained her cool unlike Trump in his last press conference nearly a year ago.



Sarah Huckabee Sanders routinely holds press conferences in the White House press room in front of the White House press corps every week. Trump holds occasional news conferences on the White House lawn to the accompaniment of Marine One's churning chopper blades.

Why doesn't Trump hold professional press conferences in front of the press? That's easy. Trump is a comedian, remember. His administration is all a big joke to him. Proof of that is his sophomoric official Presidential statements as described earlier. As an alpha male comedian, he will not share the stage with others.

Then there is the distinct possibility that some of those gosh darn reporters might ask some embarrassing questions about his firing of Comey, obstruction of justice, his childish attacks on Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, Russian contacts with his close associates and members of his family, collaboration with Russia, tax returns, etc., etc.

Trump cannot have that. As a comedian he must maintain control at all times, and he doesn't want to bother with answering a bunch of foolish and serious questions.

The sheer irony in all this? Trump is allowing women to do the talking for him, women like Nikki Haley and Sarah Sanders, while he plays the role of comedian.

He is the President. He can do whatever he wants.

Or so he thinks.

 

Reaction from Trump supporters to this post. No comment.

Well, what can they say? The post lays bare Trump's vulnerabilities.

 

Here is why Trump won't hold a press conference in the White House press room like Sarah does on a regular basis. Here is a short excerpt from his last press conference in February. It was a disaster and here is why.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/01/11/trump-to-cnn-reporter-you-are-fake-news.html

 

Once again, it is easy to see why Trump will not hold a full blown press conference with the White House press corps in the press room, something Sarah Sanders does routinely every week. Trump hasn't held a press conference since February.

Today, he held an abbreviated joint news conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg in the White House East Room. After their prepared speeches which took up most of the conference, there was a brief question period for the two officials. They were asked some softball questions from mostly friendly reporters who didn't want to create controversy, enabling both to make speeches to serve as answers to questions.

One intriguing question was allowed. Trump launched into a monologue of lies, re-lived the Election of 2016 for the umpteenth time, and refused to answer the question.

Roberts: "Are you open to meeting with (special counsel Robert Mueller)? Would you be willing to meet with him without condition? Or would you demand that a strict set of parameters be placed around any encounter between you and the special counsel?"

Trump: "Well, again John, there has been no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians or Trump and Russians. No collusion. When I watch you interviewing all the people leaving their committees, I mean, the Democrats are all running for office, trying to say this that -- but bottom line, they all say there's no collusion. And there is no collusion.

"And when you talk about interviews, Hillary Clinton had an interview, where she wasn't sworn in, she wasn't given the oath, they didn't take notes, they didn't record and it was done on the 4th of July weekend. That's perhaps ridiculous and a lot of people looked upon that as being a very serious breach and it really was.

"But again I'll speak to attorneys -- I can only say this, there was absolutely no collusion. Everybody knows it. Every committee -- I've been in office now for 11 months. For 11 months, they've had this phony cloud over this administration, over our government. And it has hurt our government. It does hurt our government. It's a Democrat hoax that was brought up as an excuse for losing an election that frankly the Democrats should have won because they have such a tremendous advantage in the electoral college.

"So it was brought up for that reason. But it has been determined that there is no collusion and by virtually everybody. So we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. I mean certainly we'll see what happens -- when they have no collusion and nobody's found any collusion at any level it seems unlikely that you'd even have an interview."

Minutes later he walked out of the room.

This was the President speaking. It was god awful embarrassing.

So was this. "In November, we started delivering the first F-52s and F-35 fighter jets," Trump said. There is no such as a F-52. The order was for 52 F-35's.

 

Still another reason why Trump will never face the White House press corps in the press room just like Sarah does every week. He is scared to death of reporters in an open setting where he can't just walk away.

The problem with Trump is he follows one disaster with a greater disaster. Often times that is caused by a psyche that requires Trump to double down on a mistake in judgment.

However, that was not the case Thursday when an egregious error in judgment was followed by an even greater egregious error in judgment. The first error concerned the FISA program. Trump forgot what his position was on FISA, and he seemed to be siding with the liberals in an early morning tweet. He had to be told what his position was by chief of staff, John Kelly, and the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

The greater error came later in the day, and the first monstrous error was quickly forgotten. In a meeting with Senators Trump used an expletive deleted racial slur followed by other racial remarks. For example, saying that he preferred immigrants from Nordic white Norway to the brown-skinned immigrants from Haiti. He later denied he said anything discriminatory or naughty, but no one believes him anymore. He simply lies too much.

The uproar was immediate, expected, and long in duration. Even Republicans are joining in or avoiding the issue, and certainly not defending Trump for his inexcusable remarks. The Hill reports, "A number of Republicans are distancing themselves from President Trump’s remarks describing Haiti and other poor countries as “shitholes” as coverage of the incendiary comments for a second day dominates news coverage."

The Hill continued, "GOP lawmakers in swing districts and Republicans who represent populations of emigrants from the countries insulted by Trump were the quickest to separate themselves from the president’s comments as they sought to insulate themselves from blow back."

The fact that still later in the day Trump wrote a tweet filled with lies that announced he was cancelling a trip to Britain was largely overlooked. Instead of blaming the expected raucous protests because of his 75% unpopularity, Trump blamed Obama for a Bush decision.

The only question remaining is, how much longer are Republican leaders in Congress going to put up with Trump's antics. Clearly, he is an impediment to their agenda. Republicans should be celebrating. They passed tax reform, a huge hurdle. Border security has been tightened. The economy is booming and has been ever since Republicans won victories in the Oval Office, Senate, and House. The stock market is setting records every day.

But, instead of celebrating, they are leading the President around by the nose because of his incompetence and cursing him for his brainless remarks which dominate the news cycle nearly every day.