Oh sweet Jeebus! I do not envy the White House press corps for the next four years. The good old days, when White House spokesmen and women came out politely, spoke in a pleasant voice, and then got their heads handed to them by the press corps questions and comments are clearly over. The battle lines for the press have now been drawn.
Sean Spicer just came out and gave a statement. from start to finish he sounded like he was literally daring somebody to take the first swing at him. And the momentous event that required a Saturday evening statement from the White House?
Crowd estimates. That’s basically it. Spicer was enraged that the media dared to do their own crowd estimates and report it as anything less than YUGE! Spicer decried the photo comparisons between 2009 and 2017, highlighting that this was the first time that the NPS had used white tarps to protect the grass, which highlighted the empty spots. No shit Sherlock! And if you see the empty white spaces, people aren’t standing there, which means the crowd is small. Spicer rationalized that green or brown grass in 2009 would not have highlighted the sparseness of the crowd, and besides, nobody knows how large the crowd was because the NPS didn't announce any estimate. He used the same logic to mock the media estimates of the crowds for the marches today, and demanded no comparisons of the two shall be made.
But being Sean Spicer, who one would imagine is speaking for the President, he couldn’t let it go. He had to directly threaten the press corp, and the media in general. He angrily declared that the accountability door swings both ways. If the press was going to fabricate and misrepresent the administration, the President would speak directly to the people. I read that to mean many more 3 a.m. Twitter tantrums to come, as well as more mass rallies across the country.
Personally, I don't see that there is any use having daily press briefings from the White House. They are just going to be exercises in bullshit propaganda and any press questions about them will be ridiculed angrily. Actual information is going to be very hard to come by for the next four years from the White House.
Fortunately, there is a solution, but I seriously doubt that the networks have the cojones for it. If The Gropenfuror is going to bypass the media by taking his dog and pony show on the road, the media should respond by boycotting any live coverage of his rally speeches. They’re in the business to present news, and there is no valid news that will come out of those. Accountability isn’t the only door that swings both ways Spicer you moron!