Screenshot via "Fox & Friends"
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham
- White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on "Fox & Friends" that she doesn't want to hold televised press briefings because reporters "just want their moment to peddle their books."
- As the Washington Post recently noted, the last briefing was held by former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on March 11, 2019. Grisham has not held a briefing in her time in the role.
- "They don't want information, because my team and I give them information every single day...they want a moment, they want their moment on TV so they can peddle their books," Grisham said of the press.
- Not holding briefings where a reporter can ask any question on the spot allows Grisham to selectively respond to the questions she wants to address.
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In a Thursday morning interview on "Fox & Friends," White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said she doesn't want to hold televised press briefings because reporters "just want their moment to peddle their books."
While daily briefings from the press secretary were a staple of most White Houses, they've become fewer and farther between under the Trump administration.
As the Washington Post recently noted, the last White House press briefing was held by former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on March 11, 2019, almost a full year ago.
Grisham, who was previously First Lady Melania Trump's spokeswoman, has not held a single on-camera briefing since taking over Sanders' job in July 2019.
When the hosts of "Fox & Friends" pressed Grisham on when she would hold a briefing, she argued that she's able to talk to more reporters and answer their questions outside the setting of a briefing, where only a few reporters get to ask questions in a relatively limited time frame.
"I talk to the media every day," Grisham said. "During my day, I talk to five, six, seven reporters from every single outlet, print, radio, and online...it's just not on TV."
Grisham then claimed that White House reporters are more concerned with promoting themselves, saying that if she does decide to hold a press briefing, "maybe we do it off-camera, maybe that would be better because then the grandstanding won't happen."
After co-host Steve Doocy joked that talking to a reporter on the phone wouldn't give them a "gotcha" moment, Grisham said of the press, "They don't want information, because my team and I give them information every single day...they want a moment, they want their moment on TV so they can peddle their books."
Grisham did not specify which reporters or which books she was talking about, but her comments came after her predecessor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Fox News contributor, announced she is coming out with a memoir of her own entitled "Speaking for Myself" this September.
While Grisham claims that not holding briefings and choosing to talk to multiple reporters a day instead makes her more accessible, not holding briefings where a reporter can ask any question on the spot allows her to selectively respond to the questions she wants to address.
As CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy tweeted in response to her comments, "The thing is, outside a briefing, @PressSec gets to pick and choose which questions she wants to answer. For instance, she keeps ignoring my questions about why the administration continues to hold briefings on background, instead of on the record!"
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It's become a ritual for whatever Fox host doing the interview to ask Stephanie Grisham if she'll ever do a press briefing, and she gets increasingly annoyed with the question, this time protesting that she talks to reporters way more often than she could in a briefing. pic.twitter.com/5WJeuqkSPx
- Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) January 16, 2020