'I don't have anything': Notes from a White House briefing
You can't kill it, but the stream of daily deflections feels like a waste of time.
The daily press briefing at the White House these days feels like it exists largely to avoid the needless backlash that would arise from legacy media folk if it was eliminated or scaled back.
It rarely produces bonafide news or even supplies substantive answers to questions, beyond reiterating statements previously provided by the administration or uttered by POTUS himself. And press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is much too careful and elusive to drive much of a concrete White House message on her own.
It appears the Biden administration’s goal is to feed the media beast by filling their time with an hour of tedious exchanges that don’t yield a headline, but suffice as an occasional cable news soundbite that will readily dissolve into the content ether.
Yet it must occur each weekday, it is argued, in the name of accountability(!) and transparency(!). On Monday, I was among the herd in the pen, as part of McClatchy’s rotating schedule for Washington correspondents.
It’s not always seamless to thrust a political reporter into the briefing room On the campaign trail, and even in the halls of Congress, it’s every man and woman for themselves, fighting for proximity to the principal in marbled hallways, outside diners and along ropelines. It’s more of a fair fight in that you’re rewarded for the creative ways you can catch the target’s attention.
Meritocracy!
In the White House, there’s an established hierarchy, with TV reporters in the front row, and frumpy print dinosaurs lodged in the back. Seniority rules; your seat and row signify status. You are to wait to be called upon. If you disrupt this process, you lack decorum and are a heathen.
On Monday, the pre-briefing buzz in the room was about the aesthetic renovations to the James S. Brady briefing room.
A woman seated next to veteran White House scribe April Ryan said she liked the new seats because they were sturdier. “They’re plastic,” Ryan said.
“But I like them because they’re harder,” the women went on.
“They’re plastic. They’re plastic,” Ryan repeated over her colleague at least a half a dozen times.
When Jean-Pierre emerged at the podium to point out the smell of a new car enveloping the room, Ryan called back, “Kick the tires.”
As if to say the new digs still needed testing.
“Say that one more time?,” Jean-Pierre replied.
“Kick the tires,” Ryan repeated.
Jean-Pierre, seemingly confused by the reference, tilted her head and smiled.
“Kick the tires? Okay.”
A few people laughed.
The briefing included more than three dozen questions over 48 minutes.
Topics ranged from the state of democracy in Israel to Texas’ floating river barrier meant to stop the flow of migrants to the nation’s heat wave.
The most common phrase uttered by Jean-Pierre was “don’t have.”
She said it 18 times in under an hour.
Is President Biden meeting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu soon?
“I just don’t have a date.”
Private Travis King, the American military service member now in North Korea. Was it his intention to defect?
“Don’t have anything to share on anything that’s been reported on the reasons.”
The Ohio police department that deployed a dog on a motorist on July 4th. Any comment?
