President Trump has held 93 press conferences since taking office, more than the 70 held by President Barack Obama over the same amount of time and the 72 held by President George W. Bush, according to research compiled by historian Martha Kumar.
Only Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush had more during the first 39 months of their presidencies. The former ended up with 133 during his first term, and the latter did 142. If Trump continues at his current pace of six or seven press conferences a week amid the pandemic, and he shows no sign of wanting to slow down, he will eclipse them both by the end of June.
What’s more, Trump has taken questions frequently from White House reporters on the South Lawn before departing on excursions and during press “pool sprays” after meetings in the Oval Office. Obama, widely viewed as well-liked by the media, took far fewer questions in such settings.
“What is different with Trump is to have so many [press conferences] in such a short period of time,” Kumar told the Washington Examiner. “Without his political rallies, Trump reaches out to his base and to others through his tweets and with these extended joint news conferences with task force members. The sessions are both more numerous and longer than what other presidents have done.”
Trump has taken questions in almost all of them, said Kumar, as he has during question-and-answer sessions with reporters on the White House South Lawn. And he calls out his opponents much as he did during his precoronavirus political rallies.
The press conferences substitute for these, Kumar explained, with the president notifying his supporters of the meeting time on Twitter. “He knows that people are interested,” she said.
“He seems to like two kinds of audiences: ones who love him and ones who don’t — who he thinks don’t like him, who are working against him.”
With fewer reporters in the White House briefing room than it can hold because of social distancing measures, the structure of the press conference today differs from those held by previous presidents. And during the president’s preferred South Lawn question-and-answer sessions, Trump can choose which questions called out he prefers to answer.
But Trump is calling on nearly everyone available in the room, often more than once, giving reporters the chance to ask follow-up questions and to follow up on each other. “We see hard questions being asked and continually so,” Kumar said.
Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama took reporters’ questions in about one-third of their public speaking events, according to a review by Kumar’s White House Transition Project. For Trump, the figure was above 50%, even before the White House began near-nightly coronavirus briefings.
And much like the South Lawn question-and-answer sessions Trump preferred before the virus lockdown, Trump gives ample details on how he views current events and how he hopes the world will view him and his leadership.
Politico last week compared the briefings to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Great Depression- and World War II-era fireside chats — “a news briefing from government officials who your life actually depended on.”
One of these officials is public health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. Fauci, who has served six administrations and whose purchase with the president is often a matter of speculation, recently called the briefings “really draining” in an interview with the Associated Press.
“One thing we have not had is a paucity of information on what he’s thinking,” Kumar said. “Between his tweets and these sessions, we get a very good look at how he is seeing the world and how he wants others to come view him and his leadership.”
