Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton hasn’t held a press conference with reporters in more than 80 days, according to reporters embedded with her campaign.
In that same amount of time, President Obama has held two press briefings, according to CNN producer Dan Merica.
“For those counting: It has been 85 days since Hillary Clinton held a press conference,” Merica said Saturday on social media. “In that time, the actual president has held two.”
The former secretary of state is expected this weekend to best her chief rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the South Carolina Democratic primary.
Along with most political pundits, the Vermont lawmaker suggested this week it’s unlikely he will beat Clinton in the Palmetto State.
“It’s a “hard state for us, no ifs, buts and maybes,” Sanders said this week.
“She has names of many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who supported her. You start off with that, you have those votes in the bank, and you go on,” Sanders said.
“You know what? I started off without one person voting for us. We have to earn every bloody vote, and that’s hard stuff. Hillary Clinton has very strong roots in the African-American community. We have had to build those roots,” he added.
Questions surrounding Clinton’s lack of media availability, and how rarely she “gaggles” her travelling reporters, have dominated much of press’ coverage of her second run for the White House.
When Clinton launched her presidential campaign in April, newsrooms, including Politico, the Washington Post and the Washington Examiner, started tracking how little the Democratic candidate made herself available to her press pool.
And though the 2016 Democratic front-runner has participated in several sit-down interviews, and taken dozens of questions at town hall events, it has still been 85 days since she had an informal and unscripted interaction with the press.
Clinton campaign spokesperson Jesse Ferguson defended Clinton last year when he was asked about the lack of press conferences. Ferguson asked: “If a candidate answers hours of questions from real people on camera but they didn’t come from press, did they happen?”
Clinton’s campaign maintained earlier this year that pointing out her lack of interactions with her press gaggle, as well as the absence of press conferences, is ridiculous.
“Since the beginning of December, she’s done over 75 interviews for a total of more than 12 hours, including with those that travel with her, as recently as yesterday,” Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill said in late January.
“She also took over 500 questions from the public in town halls last year, an ongoing conversation that ranged from how to raise wages to bullying to autism to her faith. That’s a lot of time answering questions, and it’s been an central part of this campaign,” Merrill added.
If Clinton wins in South Carolina Saturday, it would make it her third election victory against Sanders. She won the Iowa Democratic caucus in January, but lost the New Hampshire primary in a near-landslide. She came back against the senator this month by winning the Nevada Democratic caucus.
