WASHINGTON — If you happen to’re keen on discovering Donald Trump’s exact phrases as he lied about his failed coup try in his Jan. 20 remarks on the U.S. Capitol quickly after his inaugural speech, good luck with that.
Identical along with his Feb. 12 ideas within the Oval Workplace on how magnetism, in his view “a new theory,” doesn’t work on the plane provider Gerald Ford.
Or his statements within the Feb. 28 assembly with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, berating the Ukrainian president and empathizing with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin as an alternative.
Ditto along with his April 14 rationalization of how effectively he’s doing with “the cognitive” in comparison with earlier occupants of the White Home.
The self-proclaimed “most transparent” White Home in historical past, because it seems, has little curiosity in making the overwhelming majority of Trump’s speeches and interactions with journalists readily accessible to the general public whose taxes pay for his or her transcription, publishing simply 29 transcripts of the 146 public remarks Trump made in his first 100 days in workplace.
Trump’s White Home posted transcripts for under 11 of the 40 speeches during which Trump didn’t take questions from the media, and for under one in all his six formal information conferences, in accordance with a HuffPost assessment. And of the 98 media “availabilities” during which Trump took questions from reporters informally — a follow that his aides level to as proof of his nice accessibility — solely 15 of the transcripts have been made public.
Earlier White Homes, going again many years, made the entire transcripts compiled by the non-political stenography workplace, staffed by profession civil servants, accessible in printed kind, by way of electronic mail and on the White Home web site, as a matter after all. Trump’s first-term employees additionally printed all his remarks, excluding his speeches at rallies and fundraisers. Trump’s second-term White Home stopped emailing transcripts to its press record simply 5 days after taking workplace, and of late has largely stopped posting them on the web site, too. As of Thursday morning, the final transcript from Trump on the positioning is from March 13.
Trump aides wouldn’t clarify their resolution to withhold 80% of the transcripts which were ready. White Home communications director Steven Cheung, nonetheless, did insult HuffPost for asking the query:
“You must be truly fucking stupid if you think we’re not transparent. The president regularly does multiple press engagements per day and they are streamed live on multiple platforms. We’ve even granted low-level outlets like HuffPo [sic] additional access to events, because we’re so transparent. For anyone to think otherwise proves they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Stop beclowning yourself,” he wrote, demanding that his assertion be printed “in full.”
Kathleen Corridor Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Coverage Middle on the College of Pennsylvania, mentioned transcriptions of a president’s remarks have at all times been seen as historic data, not issues to be politicized. “Making the words of the president readily available is part of the accountability obligation of the White House,” she mentioned.
“The public has the right to know what the leader says … It’s a mark of a democratic system,” she added, saying that she couldn’t speculate as to why Trump is withholding most of his transcripts’ launch. “Trying to figure out why this White House does what it does requires a skill far beyond mine.”
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs
‘Utterly Fucking Off The Rails’
Whereas it’s true that movies of practically all of Trump’s public remarks can be found on C-SPAN, YouTube or different web sites, they aren’t simply searchable by matter or key phrase. There are non-public companies that transcribe his phrases, however they aren’t complete and never well-known to the general public.
Certainly, Trump critics say that growing the issue of discovering his precise phrases on any given matter is exactly the purpose of preserving a lot of the official transcripts a secret. After 10 years of listening to him, Trump’s outlandish claims and fixed lies have turn into mere background noise to many Individuals, they argue, whereas truly studying his statements hits differently.
“They know the transcripts will reveal, on paper, the word salad and incoherence that characterizes Trump,” mentioned Norman Ornstein, a political scientist with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “It is much easier to pore through written transcripts and compare them, which will show inconsistencies and reversals.”
Andrew Bates, a prime press aide within the Joe Biden White Home, mentioned his counterparts within the Trump White Home clearly perceive that studying what Trump has mentioned doesn’t replicate effectively on him. “He keeps saying things that are a liability, like talking about dolls and pencils. Or just getting confused,” Bates mentioned.
The Biden press workplace famously altered punctuation in a transcript to make it appear that Biden was criticizing a smaller subset of Trump supporters than the transcript initially steered. The Biden crew, nonetheless, launched that transcript and seems to have launched all these ready by the stenography workplace, totaling effectively over 2,000 over 4 years.
The Trump press store, in distinction, seems to have determined that one of the simplest ways to keep away from unfavorable media protection of his transcribed remarks is to not launch them within the first place. A comparability of the posted transcripts versus the remarks for which the transcripts have been withheld suggests an effort to hide Trump’s most outrageous, factually inaccurate or lie-filled statements.
On Inauguration Day, for instance, whereas the transcript for the official speech given instantly after Trump took the oath of workplace is on the market on the White Home web site, a second one he gave to congressional Republicans quickly afterward shouldn’t be.
In that one, he once more pushed his oft-repeated lies about Jan. 6, 2021, the day he inspired a mob of his followers to march on the Capitol after which tried to make use of their assault on cops and different violence to stay in energy regardless of having misplaced the 2020 election. Trump bemoaned that his employees talked him out of together with that materials in his precise inaugural deal with.
“You can’t put things in there that you were going to put in, and I was going to talk about the J6 hostages, but you’ll be happy because you know it’s action, not words that count, and you’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages, see a lot of action,” he mentioned in a 1,232-word part that repeatedly blamed former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi for all that occurred on Jan. 6. “And I was going to talk about the things that Joe [Biden] did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes like the unselect committee of political thugs where they literally, I mean, what they did is they destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings. Practically not a thing left.”
Three weeks later, following a swearing-in ceremony for his director of nationwide intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump provided nonsensical solutions to a wide range of questions, together with one about waste and fraud within the federal authorities. Trump launched right into a 1,710-word rant on navy contractors, together with the builders of the most recent plane provider, the usGerald Ford, which makes use of a high-tech electromagnetic catapult system to launch airplanes to cut back stress on their airframes and touchdown gear.
“Take a look at the Gerald Ford, the aircraft carrier, the Ford. It came ― it was supposed to cost $3 billion; it ended up costing like $18 billion, and they make, of course, all electric catapults, which don’t work. And they have all magnetic elevators to lift up 25 planes at a time, 20 planes at a time,” he mentioned, not showing to grasp the rationale for the brand new designs. “And instead of using hydraulic, like on tractors, that can handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything, they used magnets. It’s a new theory, magnets are going to lift the planes up, and it doesn’t work.”
On the finish of that month, Trump and Vice President JD Vance attacked Ukraine’s Zelenskyy for not being sufficiently grateful to the US earlier than Trump turned to his acquainted protection of Putin, who continues to slaughter Ukrainian civilians to at the present time via aerial assaults on residential areas.
“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt, where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. You ever hear of that deal?” Trump mentioned throughout a 206-word tangent once more recounting his grievances.
“That was a phony ― that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam, Hillary Clinton, Shifty Adam Schiff. It was a Democrat scam, and he had to go through that, and he did go through it, and we didn’t end up in a war, and he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bathroom. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bedroom, it was disgusting. And then they said, ‘Oh, oh, the laptop from hell was made by Russia,’ the 51 agents, the whole thing was a scam, and he had to put up with that. He was being accused of all that stuff.”
Six weeks later, throughout a go to by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who’s housing deportees whom Trump claims are felony unlawful immigrants, Trump was requested what number of extra folks he meant to ship there. Trump responded with a 417-word reply that rapidly veered into boasts about his psychological acuity.
“By the way, I took my cognitive exam as part of my physical exam, and I got the highest mark. And one of the doctors said, ‘Sir, I’ve never seen anybody get that kind of ― that was the highest mark.’ I hope you’re happy with that, although they haven’t been bugging me too much to take a cognitive. But I did do my physical, and it was released. I hope you’re all happy with it. I noticed there’s no questions, so probably you are. But the cognitive, they said to me, ‘Sir, would you like to take a cognitive test?’ I said, ‘Did Biden take one?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did anybody take one?’ ‘No, not too many people took them.’ I said, ‘What about Obama, did he take one?’” Trump mentioned.
“The totality of his statements clearly show that he is utterly fucking off the rails,” mentioned Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP guide who grew to become an early Trump critic. “Most of the Washington media is still playing the polite game of pretending this is a normal White House, and so they just move on and move on and move on eternally into the future.”
‘What About The 38 Virgins?’
Trump’s normally rambling, usually incoherent, at instances downright deranged statements, after all, didn’t cease on the 100-day mark.
On Day 102, in a Rose Backyard celebration of the Nationwide Day of Prayer, Trump steered that Muslims are primarily terrorists keen to die to earn a reward of virgins in paradise: “Imams who I got to know in Michigan. I loved them. They were great, by the way. They said, ‘We don’t want to die.’ I said, ’Do you want to die? They said, ‘We don’t want to die.’ I said, ‘What about the 38 virgins?’”
On Day 106, in an Oval Workplace picture alternative, Trump went on at size about his concept of reopening Alcatraz jail in San Francisco Bay. “I guess I was supposed to be a moviemaker. We started with the moviemaking, and we’ll end, I mean, it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say the ultimate, right, Alcatraz, Sing-Sing and Alcatraz the movies,” he mentioned in a solution that continued for 268 phrases. “But it’s right now a museum, believe it or not. A lot of people go there. It housed the most violent criminals in the world, and nobody ever escaped. One person almost got there, but they, as you know the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up, and it was a lot of shark bites, a lot of problems.”
It’s unclear what movement footage that includes the jail as a setting need to do with reopening Alcatraz or why Trump believed his Muslim supporters in Michigan could be entitled to solely 38 virgins, simply over half of the 72 usually cited.
Among the many posted transcripts are two media interviews he did. Whereas Trump does quite a few interviews — most of which embrace statements that make him appear ignorant or silly or each — his press employees has posted solely two softball interviews: One by casual Trump adviser and Fox Information host Sean Hannity dated Feb. 18 in addition to a two-minute one by Jamie Little, a Fox Sports NASCAR announcer on the Daytona 500 race that Trump had attended two days earlier.
And whereas the stenography workplace transcribes each White Home briefing and question-and-answer session aboard Air Drive One by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, she and her employees have launched solely two. One was her first briefing on Jan. 29, during which she promised to at all times inform the reality, which she then instantly adopted with an absurd falsehood about $50 million price of condoms being despatched to the Gaza Strip. The second was the Feb. 20 briefing during which she and different aides celebrated Trump’s first month in workplace.
Leavitt didn’t reply to HuffPost queries for this story.
Trump’s refusal to launch transcripts created at taxpayer expense is only one piece of his effort to decrease unbiased information media. He has seized management of the White Home press pool, which covers his occasions that happen in confined areas just like the Oval Workplace and Air Drive One, from the White Home Correspondents Affiliation, which had administered it since its inception many years in the past.
Trump and his employees have changed journalists from official information organizations with pro-Trump cheerleaders in lots of the pool seats.
Trump additionally excluded the Related Press from the pool as a result of it refused to bend to his will and name the Gulf of Mexico by the title Trump decreed by fiat, the Gulf of America. When a federal decide dominated that Trump couldn’t deal with the AP any in a different way than it treats different wire companies, he responded by ending assigned pool slots for all three wires: the AP, Reuters and Bloomberg.
On Trump’s present tour to the Arabian Peninsula, his first prolonged overseas journey since he retook workplace in January, not one U.S. wire service print reporter has been a part of the pool aboard Air Drive One or in conferences with varied officers — thereby degrading information protection for hundreds of stories retailers with billions of readers in the US and globally.
