White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave a telling off-camera, no-audio briefing Monday that was remarkable for, well, how entirely useless it was, as CNN's Jim Acosta put it.
In fact, Acosta said of Spicey Monday that he's gotten to a point where "he's just kind of useless."
Now, you're likely thinking: How could Spicey be any more "useless" than he already is? Well, first of all, by cutting off all audio/video recordings, the White House is now taking away one tool the media uses to represent how the administration is thinking or responding or even not responding to any given issue. As Acosta noted of Spicer:
"If he can't come out and answer the questions and they're just not gonna do this on-camera or audio—why are we even having these briefings or these gaggles in the first place?"
In fact, without video or audio today, Spicey just plain abandoned any inkling that he was actually trying to answer questions.
No word on climate change, for instance ...
Ok, how about health care, the linchpin of the GOP’s agenda?
Okay, so Spicer can’t answer anything really—he doesn’t know, he doesn’t talk to Trump, he probably doesn’t care. This is exactly the way Trump wants it. Spicer admitted at the briefing that Dear Leader doesn’t want anyone interfering with his hallowed message. So on days that Trump speaks, expect the briefings to be extra special useless, if they exist at all.
Perhaps a mid-afternoon Politico report that Spicer is now searching for his own replacement shouldn’t come as surprise. But it’s unclear whether a new hire would change anything on this potentially slippery slope. Earlier this month, the White House banned networks from carrying briefings live. Now it appears no recordings of the White House’s uselessness will be allowed at all.
Maybe the White House is headed down the same path as the State Department, which held: zero briefings in January, zero in February, 10 in March (four off-camera), six in April (two off-camera), zero in May, and four in June, so far. The pre-Trump practice of airing daily press briefings at the U.S. State Department used to be held up as an example of American transparency and the briefings were watched closely by leaders around the globe. Now, not so much.
But don’t tell Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who spoke aloud for the first time today to tell us the U.S. is becoming a “global leader” in the field of government technology innovation, “making the government more transparent and responsive to citizens needs." And whatever you do, don’t ask Spicey about it.