Him as bizarre as bizarre as that was, that wasnt the salient issue for me, personally. My problem is that he came in, shouted at everybody, and refused to take questions. That was a fundamental violation of the purpose of that room. Its not about questions, its about answers. I have heard sean and a lot of different venues and i think he was very subdued and contrite today, but i have seen a diminishment of that room over the last three months. That the Obama Administration sought to cool it down after robert gibbs was the press secretary, who would make news from the podium with great regularity. I dont think president obama appreciated that. I think that what we have seen is a series of missteps. I think it is entirely appropriate and unbiased to say that the level of information and the quality of information we received during these briefings, is, i believe, not up to the standard of what we believe ought to be in the Briefing Room. I would put this out for mr. Spicer and his staff. Receivingen on the end, many times, of lectures about what we need to do, professionally, in terms of dealing with our process. I would encourage he and his staff to do the same. Flex when i was White House Correspondent, a lot of the information came from outside the white house. Same logistics. Logistics . One of the things it you learn covering the white house over time is that theres information you get from inside the building but the information you are really after often comes from outside the building. It was something that took me a while to grasp when i first started covering the beat and it was coming back to the beat this year, after being off on the twoaign most of last year, of my resolutions were to go to the briefing less and spend more time outside the white house. You find that you just, i think, get a lot more depth in your coverage when youre talking not to the Communications Shop or policy shop at the white house, but to who is talking to them on capitol hill. Who is talking to them in the lobby and world . One of the great things about President Trump is that he talks to a ton of people. The traditional people in washington that you would expect him to. His friends and associates from new york, maralago, his business world. As reporters it gives us this great advantage to not only know the people surrounding him every day inside the white house, but to really get perspective about him from outside. [indiscernible] i agree with everything that julie is saying. Some of the best insight i have gotten into this president comes from his friends, who dont necessarily live in d. C. I think one of the things that makes covering this white house really striking is the sheer amount of energy that this president has and that sort of requires a 24 7 new cycle in a way that is on a whole new level. He tweets at 6 00 a. M. 11 00 p. M. He we are often reporting out stories overnight, literally until midnight, 1 a. M. In the morning. I think that you always have to be prepared, when Walking Around that white house. Because obviously he sometimes invites reporters into the oval office. I was invited in for an impromptu meeting with him. You always sort of have to be on your toes to make sure that you are getting the best information pushing the headlines forward. Jim, i mentioned that back and forth. Has it evolved . Jim i havent been invited into any private meetings in the white house. [laughter] jim perhaps you could have figured that out. He and i had that back and forth in january, which by the way, conferencey news during the transition, remember that. He only had one News Conference on january 11. Nine days later, during the inauguration, i was positioned on the north lawn of the white thee right in the middle in president and first lady walked right past me, i threw a question at him and he answered it. To some extent he knows television. He is not going to miss a moment if it is going to serve his purpose. I think that to some extent, thats what happened on january 11. He and i had this back and forth. To quickly go over that, my feeling is that our News Organization was being attacked on that day. Our organization deserved information. Things have evolved since then. You notice that there was that one News Conference where they went backandforth and he asked me if i was elated to alexander acosta, labor secretary. That did happen, you can go back and look at the tate. I think that to sign to some extent he enjoys the sparring. The one thing i do want to say, and we will probably have time to talk about all of this, we are told that we live in this nothing matters world or that we are in this posttruth world. That couldnt be further from the truth. Now more than ever, speaking truth to power means everything. That is what i was trying to do on that day back in january. That is what we at cnn and my colleagues here try to do every day. Would you do it the same way again . I would, yeah. If our if our News Organization is being attacked, my sense is that that cannot go without any kind of response. Really quickly, that night i heard from a news executive from another network who said hey, you did a great job today defending our network and i said i was defending all of us. Could be your network tomorrow charlie, you covered inside of the Obama Administration inside the white house, from the examiner to breitbart. Breitbart is obviously a Different Organization in that you have previous ties with someone inside the white house, steve bannon. You have to kind of separate that, i suppose, and how you cover the white house. Talk about the unique challenges for you . Absolutely. And the campaign the president made a lot of promises to our readers tom readers, to conservatives in general. He talked a lot about immigration, talk a lot about building a wall, talked a lot about helping the vets. He made a very long list of promises and we were one of the conservative outlets that took him at his word and really, just republished everything that he said as it was. We didnt suggest that maybe he was lying or fake on these issues. We have a bigger responsibility to tackle his work here. To hold them accountable to the promises he made to the readers. Is a unique, this white house, in trying to get information for you . Do you have more access . Charlie thats really funny. The frustrating part, i think, is that when people read the Breitbart News website and just assume that everything is coming from a steve bannon dispatch. I suddenly dont get phone calls from him. Hes now a source an pretty much a useless source in many cases. [laughter] talks toyou probably other outlets more than he talks to Breitbart News. He probably talks to other outlets more than he talks to Breitbart News. I think that steve bannon is pretty open on who he is and were going to cover him as a member of the white house. If he strays from anything that our readers believe in, we will definitely hold him accountable. Sean glenn talk about the policy decisions versus the process. Here in washington, obviously, we get a lot of behindthescenes about who is up and who is up into his down and what is going to happen. Many things could be inside the white house very soon, personnel wise. How do you balance that as far as coverage . First of all, i dispute the process the notion that process is an policy. Process is policy. That manifests itself clearly. When sean first started making the argument, if im not mistaken, having to do with the devin nunes midnight visit to the campus of the white house, where he kept saying as we were asking questions, really important questions about who he was meeting with, who authorized the meetings, did the president know about these things, sean would reduce that to us asking questions about how people were dressed, the gate that they came in. It behooves him, from his , topective of being a flak make a differentiation between process and policy. I will tell you that i started off my career, crazy as it might sound, improv an policy. I covered poverty in new york city for five or six years. I would like to engage members of the administration on serious policy discussions and i find it difficult to find people to engage at that level. So, i think in general the process in which this particular is in, itson important, as they have violated issues of process and in some instances i dont think they believe that having they fully understand what the appropriate process was. Were you surprised when the president called . I think he gets props for this. This is something he doesnt get enough credit for. Its funny, again, maggie and i and a bunch of other people who cover the white house right now come out of the crucible of new york city hall. I have said very often, having covered the Obama Administration and bush administration, this seems more like a national ty than a white house. Covering Rudy Giuliani and ed koch was not the similar. A lot of my colleagues who had covered the white house as the white house were like what the hell is this . I was like, this is an end koch 1987 press conference. Ed koch 1987 press conference. [laughter] we talk about and had the names of six or seven reporters he would call on and he never diverged. He would ask him a 32nd question 3032nd question and he second question and he would give a 28 minute answer. I think in general he is much more willing to engage and he deserves credit. What about access . Glenn is right, there is this perception that our access is being taken away. Because the president does reach out to reporters at times direct way, in that directly, in that sense he sort of differentiates himself. I never experienced that in the five years i covered the Obama Administration. At the same time i think the challenge becomes trying to delve more deeply into some of the policy issues and trying to get direct answers to our questions. You talked about the issue of process and that speaks to the very underpinnings of the white house it self. Thisve been following backandforth between steve bannon and Jared Kushner, and the reason that matters is because you look at the debate over syria. We know that is something that banning considers himself a nationalist and does not necessarily support. Those types of discussions matter. I think it becomes dangerous to downplay the significance. I am a guy who covers the process and i get that. I was just going off the sean spicer comment as he was leaving with greta. I want to go into the campaign and if that factors in your mind how to deal with the white house because a lot of us missed what was happening on the campaign and did not see it at the very end that it was going to happen. Does that factor into how you cover the white house now . I think it does, and one of my regrets from the campaign is that we did not take our anchors out with us on the campaign trail, or some of our executives. Perhaps i have post campaign stress disorder. We were talking about access, i am not sure access the issue so much as attitude toward the news media. The president , to some extent, has an unhealthy attitude toward the news media and i think i am being diplomatic and i say this. He referred to the news media as media, heest news called us liars and crooks and thieves and i cannot think of all of the other names. Ts of going after cnn that he would policy for and allow the crowd to continue those chance. Chants. Question, are you concerned about undermining american confidence in the news . We need people to believe what is being said in the mainstream news media. I think the president has to understand that he is doing real damage to what we do. He is doing real damage to the First Amendment in this country when he refers to the news media as the enemies of the people. I know some of that is production. He is from 5th avenue so there is a little bit of broadway. Maybe glenn has more insight than i do. I think words matter, and those kinds of attacks have to be taken seriously. I have talked to people inside the administration, why cant the president way off of some of this fake news and enemies of the people stuff . And they say, what do you guys do and throw it back in your face. At some point we will need a detente between this administration and the news media or else it will get worse and worse. We need people to trust us, and i think we have been acting in a way that garners that trust but the president does not like bad stories about him and this is how he responds. We have got to figure a way around it. What is so striking is there is the public perception, the Public Comments the president makes and then what actually happens behind the scenes. Agree, most of us would we have pretty good working relationships with trump officials. It is so critical to underscore the point, it is not just about the backandforth between the media and the president , it is about protecting our democracy. The point that jim makes about our First Amendment, i think sometimes that gets lost in the public debate. It becomes a fight between two sides, the press versus the president and that is not what the debate is about. On the campaign there was always this talk, this is where he is going to turn. This is where he is going to be different. Do you sense that President Trump is going to somehow evil in the way he can evil evolve in the way he handles this or is this how he is . This is how he is. He has lived a decade in the spotlight and there are things about him that never are going to change. We should not expect that is going to happen because he moves on to a new phase of his political career. At the same time, i think you are seeing a process in the white house where, i dont know if they are fully accepting at this point but they are learning you could you do get treated differently as president. Trump has relationships that come from being on reality television, that come from the business world, from the gossip pages of new york. That is how different different from how you are covered as president. I think that has been a learning curve for them. Sometimes im surprised when i hear from white house officials about what actually bothers trump in his coverage. Often it is not that stories are negative, it is the tone that a question was asked with. That bothers him. It is this feeling that he does not have the relationship with the Washington Press corps that maybe he had with the new york escort, but not press corps. If you are waiting for a policy evolution or personality evolution with trump, get over it, it is not going to happen. Charlie, does the serious straight syria strike change the dynamic and how is it perceived at your organization . Strikeainly, the syria was kind of a surprise for a lot of our readers but i think we covered it in a way that made sense, focusing how it was a little different than the America FirstCampaign Message he shared. I think in hindsight and the president even said, reassured people who are concerned about our foreign policy, he reassured them we are not going into syria. I just want to refer to his comments about the media. The president made these comments about the biased media and fake news, he did not do it to denigrate the press. He did it because it was popular among his base. His base has a real problem with the way the media is perceived and i think he was in a large way, playing to the crowd, something conservatives have complained about for a long time. But you think that he has gotten to the point where he knows he is the president , he won, he does not have to keep going back to the election . The campaign is over . Do you sense that he is fighting that pr battle still day today . We have an armada, what he calls an armada in north korea. I certainly hope he does. I think charlie is 100 right on the whole issue of it eating something be something that works with the crowd. Trump refers to people as customers, and i think he views it is a different mindset than we have had for a president ever. I think it is fascinating because we think of him, and he has held himself to being a businessman when in fact he is a salesman. Having covered new york real estate, you have got to sell the hell out of it. He has a remarkably he understands his capacity to sort of calibrate the kinds of, this balancing act that charlie was describing between what the base wants and what necessities the presidency demands. That is probably the most interesting dynamic, how does he reconcile what he has to do with the base versus as president . The syria thing is such a crucible. Liked, we like to be have to put that out there. The fact that this syria strike was well received on the left and right largely, and he was senators who from do not usually give him props, does that somehow, do you think, change his outlook on how he is going to deal with foreignpolicy decisions Going Forward . Possibly. I think he is the first person to tell you he got broad, bipartisan support for the strike. It was a real turning point for him because he had a number of rocky weeks and days leading up to that. A lot of people saw that as the moment when he really started to absorb those responsibilities as president. Based on my conversations with administration officials, they have acknowledged there is a transition going on with him, that he is starting to realize everything that worked on the campaign does not necessarily work in the white house. I think the syria strike was emblematic of that, the fact that it was very calibrated speaks to his internal conflict with engaging in some of these foreign situations. But absolutely, i think you are starting to see a shift in that regard of absorbing these responsibilities. I do not think he will change who he is but he is starting to accept some of the reality of being commander in chief. I think this is important for people to know about trump. His interest in knowing the realtime reaction to his decisions is so unique. President s have covered in the past are aware of their polling and aware generally of how they are being the, but trump wants to know minute to minute how he is being received. When you talk to some republicans, this worries them a bit because he is going to find himself in position as president to make a d