If there were ever a reason to cut the daily White House coronavirus press briefings off entirely, it’s Playboy correspondent Brian Karem.
Maybe not Karem exclusively, but he is emblematic of the self-anointing he and so many other Washington reporters believe in (especially TV ones).
Karem, who once challenged someone to a physical fight while in the Rose Garden, has apparently had the misfortune of being unable to secure a pass that would allow him access to the briefing room, which has had its capacity necessarily reduced for obvious reasons.
“I provide a distinctive voice to the proceedings,” Karem moaned to the Washington Post on Wednesday. “The president has engaged me in the past and knows I won’t back down. We need that in addition to other voices in the briefings.”
We need Brian Karem, says Brian Karem!
In other words, Karem believes his responsibility right now isn’t so much in asking questions relevant to the pandemic, but it’s to provide a particular “voice.”
We don’t need him. The captive audience of Playboy will have to figure out a way to go on without Karem’s renowned tantrums.
CNN has reporters in the room. NBC has reporters in the room. ABC has reporters in the room. So do the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on and on it goes.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote Wednesday that the president should cut the amount of time that the briefings run each day, and for the same points I’ve made for the last two weeks: Their utility diminishes greatly after Trump and the experts have provided updates on the administration’s response to the virus and the questions from reporters get dumber and dumber as they wear on, serving solely as opportunities for the reporters to get TV time.
I continue watching the briefings from top to bottom because I’m paid to do it. But if I was a casual observer, I’d change the channel immediately after Trump and the health experts informed us of any progress on slowing the spread of the virus and any promising new treatment.
Nobody needs to hear Trump say again that he doesn’t think he’s at fault. Nobody needs to hear again that Trump has hope that a certain drug may work as a treatment, even if the science on it isn’t clear.
The briefings are becoming a waste, not because they’re uninformative, but because of people exactly like Karem.
