By Steve Holland, Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made her briefing debut on Tuesday, where she sparred with reporters over a federal freeze on grants and made clear that President Donald Trump himself will be the administration’s main messenger.
“The president is the best spokesperson that this White House has, and I can assure you that you’ll be hearing from both him and me as much as possible,” Leavitt told a packed briefing room.
Trump and his team have shown an eagerness to swamp the news media with the Republican president’s brash presence on a daily basis since he took office on Jan. 20. It is a stark contrast to his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, who often walked away from quizzing reporters and sometimes spoke so quietly that his words could not be discerned.
Trump has already spent hours fielding questions from reporters, both from the Oval Office soon after being sworn in and aboard Air Force One.
Last Friday, he took questions from reporters eight different times as he traveled to North Carolina and California to survey the damage from extreme weather events.
He has already made two trips to the press cabin aboard Air Force One to talk to the pool of reporters on the plane. Biden only visited the press cabin a few times over four years.
“You’re getting a little bit more access to the president than you did the last time, by about 5,000%,” Trump quipped on one of those huddles before taking more than two dozen questions from reporters on myriad topics including TikTok and foreign affairs.
Trump freewheeled, attacked the press for being “fake news” when he did not like a reporter’s question, cracked jokes, touted his accomplishments and made false claims such as suggesting the intensity of California wildfires was a consequence of water conservation policies.
On Tuesday, Leavitt, at 27 the youngest person ever to serve as White House press secretary, picked up where Trump left off.
During a 46-minute briefing, which Trump watched from elsewhere in the White House according to a source, Leavitt slammed news media she accused of being sympathetic to Biden and said conservative media outlets, along with bloggers, podcasters and influencers, would get a greater voice in the press room.
Asked the traditional first-day question of whether she would knowingly lie to the news media, Leavitt said she would not. Then she turned the question around on those posing questions, reviving Trump’s complaints that he has not been treated fairly.
“We know for a fact there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, about his family, and we will not accept that,” she said.
“We will call you out when we feel that your reporting is wrong or there is misinformation about this White House. So yes, I will hold myself to the truth, and I expect everyone in this room to do the same,” Leavitt said.
(Reporting By Steve Holland, Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose; additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Deepa Babington)
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