than most americans. sandra: we know that this things this white house has said about the media from go. there was some speculation that they are going to cancel white house press briefings entirely. i think there was even threat to do so. the fact that the white house has only had to go on camera briefings in the last couple weeks, is it a possibility they might go into that direction and not hold any briefings at all? once this administration decided it was not really going for persuadable voters anymore, that this president was going to write off those folks and go for keeping the base, his base of voters fired up and engaged, skipping through the press and what they see as distortions from the press and characterization and this kind of reporting and going straight to rallies, going straight to interviews with outlets that are seen as more favorable by the president s base. doing those things and just keeping those voters engaged. it s probably a politically smart move. sandr
obstruction. we ll have to see. i can say that the people hired are all hillary clinton supporters. reporter: the white house briefing today is expected to be off camera around 1:30 eastern time with the white house press secretary sean spicer. there have been only two on camera briefings in the last two weeks. thank you very much. white house that doesn t want to face questions from reporters and apparently can t answer tough questions. let s bring back our panel. joining us washington post congressional reporter. welcome all. maggie, you are covering the white house every day. you are seeing this up close. to just let it sink in, you have a president of the united states who threatened an fbi director with secret recordings that he didn t have and let this play out like a reality tv show and really set in motion with that one threat an entire set of
legislation. all of this that we re learning no, one makes anyone be not secretive. we learned with the tax returns, all the candidates had given theirs. mitch mcconnell is saying, i don t care about this, the state department has been running on camera briefings for years. those are just traditions. i guess, what is the limiting condition here? what bounds any sort of public exchange? what creates the conditions for that? do they ultimately have to pay a political price? that will be, it remains to be seen. donald trump is clearly decimating norms of that office that he holds. this is the senate. it is a cooling saucer so to speak for the hot tea of the republic that we are supposed to be the world s greatest deliberative body.
thing to do. and number two, there s a bigger issue about white house transparency and secrecy in this interim period where his job has been underreview or consideration, they ve start dodd more off camera briefings, which i m a tv person so we want the camera in the room. i covered the white house, they don t always will have to have a camera in the room, but it is bad when an administration starts to retreat from public discles you re and public discourse. that s my speech. but when we start with the issue of sean spicer, we expect tim who step snoo some behind the scenes roll and someone else to step? we don t know. i think there will be changes and they ve already implemented a number of clangz in the way they re handling the press operation and the briefing. we ve not had a briefing on camera in a week and they ll do one today for the first time. but they can sthooz choose now do their press operation however they want to do, but it doesn t mean that they get to skirt accounta
well, that s a good question. i think that let me tell you about the experiences that my colleagues who have covered past administrations have also had, right. that is where we often see, for example, during prior administrations on camera briefings regularly from the press secretary and in addition so-called background briefings. those are the ones you might see it cited as a senior administration official or a white house official talking about a specific element or area of policy. but remember, that was in addition to the on camera on the record briefings that reporters were already getting. that has obviously shifted a little bit in this administration. shifted fairly significantly depending on who you might talk to and depending on the topic of the day. the other question folks will have, the press secretary we have seen has increasingly talked about not having a particular conversation with the president. i think of this most notably, for example, that climate change question