Hillary Clinton spent time with the group of reporters who follow her on the campaign trail, taking their questions in a group format. Now we get to have a very important debate over whether that counts as a press conference or should be described by another word meaning roughly the same thing. Donald Trump and his allies are pushing the idea that it doesn’t—which would mean the media should continue to be aggrieved with Clinton for the same low-substance reason.
Was it a news conference or something else — perhaps merely a "gaggle" or an "avail"?
Under different circumstances, this would be a silly, semantic argument, but the Democratic presidential candidate's lack of news conferences has become a campaign issue, with journalists complaining that she has not held one since last year, and Donald Trump's team attempting to brand her as "Hiding Hillary."
Unsurprisingly, Trump's media allies at outlets such as Breitbart and Infowars, said the Q&A does not count as a news conference.
Psst: It’s still a silly, semantic argument.
Trump had a very sad(!) moment Tuesday, when a “Hiding Hillary” email his campaign sent to reporters linked to a Washington Post “how many days since Hillary Clinton held a press conference” counter that had been reset on Monday. Sending out something saying it’s been 0.6 days since Hillary Clinton held a press conference doesn’t do much for the attempt to portray her as “hiding.”
And, of course, in the time that Clinton was supposedly hiding, she did hundreds of interviews—they just didn’t count because they were with the wrong people, or one-on-one rather than in a group, or various other excuses. If she was trying to hide, she was doing a really bad job of it. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to move past this whole stupid issue.
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