When I first began covering the Pentagon in 1992, I took time to view the official orientation movie shown to visitors on tours of the building. In a stentorian voice evoking the newsreels of a bygone era, the narrator said the Pentagon was known as “the building that speaks” for its many public pronouncements prefaced by the phrase “The Pentagon said …”
From the Vietnam War years through the 1991 Persian Gulf War and on through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon held regular briefings for reporters to ask questions in a public forum on behalf of the American people.
But under the Trump administration, the Pentagon has slowly lost its voice, developing a case of institutional laryngitis that renders it mostly mute, to the point where there has not been an on-camera briefing by an official department spokesman in over a year.
At a recent but still rare off-camera engagement with the Pentagon press corps in the commodious, the now lightly used high-tech briefing room, the acting chief spokesman for the acting defense secretary was at a loss to explain why.
“I can’t tell you why it’s been so long. But you know, I know that we will go on-camera, and when we’re ready to do that, I will let you know,” was the best Charles Summers could muster.
[Related: Sarah Sanders ends longest gap between press briefings in recent history]
Summers did promise that, at some point, Patrick Shanahan will face the cameras. He just couldn’t say when.
While Summers kept tap-dancing, the unspoken answer to the question couldn’t be clearer. It’s why Jim Mattis avoided mounting the podium when he was at the Pentagon as President Trump’s defense secretary: It’s simply a no-win situation.
The Pentagon answers to the commander in chief, civilian control of the military being a bedrock principle in the American form of democracy. This particular commander in chief is constantly blindsiding the Pentagon with pronouncements that contravene longstanding strategies and contradict previous policies.
Whether the ban on service by transgender troops or the deployment of troops to the border, President Trump’s penchant for impulsive decision-making without all the niceties of the usual interagency process has whipsawed the Pentagon into a passive, reactive mode.
Not only are reporters unable to question a spokesman or the secretary on camera, but video briefings from U.S. military spokesmen piped in from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended as well.
The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq recently shut down his individual Twitter account. The Pentagon’s director of press operations, an Army colonel who used to do regular weekly off-camera briefings, retired with no replacement.
[Also read: Shanahan revival? ‘In shape now’ to win defense secretary post]
When major announcements are made about the U.S. military, such as the decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria or the subsequent reversal to leave 400 troops behind, the news comes from the White House, often from the president himself on Twitter.
When Sarah Sanders first gave 200 as the size of the “small contingent” of U.S. forces that would remain in Syria, the Pentagon wouldn’t discuss any troop numbers. How could it? It was out of the loop once again.
Pentagon officials have realized that when Trump prematurely pronounces the Islamic State defeated or exaggerates how much money he’s brought into NATO or goes off on another rant about how steam catapults are superior to the electromagnetic ones on the newest aircraft carriers, the less said the better, lest they seems to be contradicting their commander, who doesn’t like to be contradicted.
There is another reason the traditional twice-weekly Pentagon briefing is going the way of battleships and horse cavalry.
President Trump figured out early on he doesn’t really need the news media as a way to communicate with the American people. In fact, he generally doesn’t like what he calls the “fake news” media, because he believes that, by and large, they don’t give him the credit he believes he deserves. So who needs them?
While Pentagon reporters grouse about the responsibility of military leaders to face tough questions and speak through the press to the citizenry, they are learning a bitter lesson about the digital age.
With the rise of social media, and Trump’s command of Twitter in particular, the protestations of the traditional Pentagon press corps are largely irrelevant to the audience Trump cares about.
In January, Trump told Sarah Sanders she needn’t bother briefing anymore because the press covered her “so rudely and inaccurately.”
The State Department is the only institution operating on the old model, giving briefings and employing full-time spokesmen. Secretary Mike Pompeo gives dozens of interviews, often appears on camera in the briefing room, and, like secretaries before him, is constantly globetrotting carrying out the business of diplomacy and fiercely advancing and defending the president’s policy goals.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon just waits for its orders from the commander in chief, who these days is also the de facto spokesman in chief for the military.
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
