President Trump, in an early morning Twitter rant on Friday, told his millions of followers that no one should assume his administration's officials are speaking credibly on his policies and actions.
The tweets come after his top spokespeople, Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders, offered contradictory reasons for and timelines of Trump's controversial firing of former FBI director James Comey — only to later be undercut by Trump himself with other explanations and timelines.
It's the latest shot to the administration's extremely troubled history with the truth and accuracy.
As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!....
Trump's comments effectively undermine everything his administration's officials ever have said and ever will say, making it nearly impossible to know if they have been fully caught up with the "very active" president before they make public statements unless they admit to not knowing the latest information.
Trump also suggested he may cancel daily press briefings in favor of written statements because his surrogates potentially may not know the truth when speaking to the public.
...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???
Jeff Mason, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said the organization would contest any such move:
"White House briefings and press conferences provide substantive and symbolic opportunities for journalists to pose questions to officials at the highest levels of the US government. That exercise, conducted in full view of our republic’s citizens, is clearly in line with the spirit of the First Amendment," Mason said.
"Doing away with briefings would reduce accountability, transparency, and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the US system, no political figure is above being questioned. The White House Correspondents’ Association would object to any move that would threaten those constitutionally protected principles."
In an interview taped on Friday with Fox News, Trump doubled on the threat to cancel press conferences.
"Well, just don’t have them. Unless I have them every two weeks and I do them myself, we don’t have them," he said, citing what he said were hostile journalists.
SATURDAY: @JudgeJeanine goes one-on-one with @POTUS - Tune in at 9p ET on Fox News Channel! https://t.co/RCo53lPjT9