WASHINGTON, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Gone are the crowded arenas, the pulsing playlists, the off-the-cuff 90-minute campaign speeches. Now that Donald Trump is back in the White House, he is favoring a new style of communication with the American public – almost-daily appearances direct from the Oval Office.
In the nearly four weeks since he returned to the presidency, Trump has leveraged the grandeur of the historic West Wing office with media gatherings that are recorded and played out on news channels.
“He’s using this to highlight and accentuate his authority as president,” said presidential historian Thomas Alan Schwartz of Vanderbilt University. “There’s nothing more authoritative than the president using the Oval Office.”
The reliance on Trump to serve as his own messenger has been an explicit part of the White House communications strategy. “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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at her first press briefing on January 28.
Surrounded by presidential portraits including Ronald Reagan, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and with deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and other advisers hovering nearby, Trump has discussed everything from Ukraine and Gaza to his distaste for paper straws during free-wheeling exchanges with the press.
Trump usually holds court seated behind the historic Resolute Desk, made from the timbers of a British Arctic exploration ship of the same name and a gift from Queen Victoria that has been used by multiple presidents. Trump has brought back the red button for ordering Diet Cokes from a valet that featured in his first term.00:18China hits back as US changes statement on Taiwan independence
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The frequency of the sessions are a departure from his predecessor, Joe Biden, who invited criticism for his limited engagements with reporters and largely stuck to speeches delivered from a teleprompter in the Roosevelt Room, East Room and other public areas.
Of Trump’s 34 sessions with reporters since he took office, 16 were conducted in the Oval Office, according to presidential scholar Martha Joynt Kumar.
That’s considerably more than Biden, who held 22 short question-and-answer sessions with reporters at the same point in his presidency, including nine from the Oval Office, Kumar said. And it’s nearly three times as many as the beginning of Trump’s first term, when he held just five press meetings in the Oval.
Asked to comment on the frequent Oval Office appearances, Leavitt said: “President Trump is happy to open up the Oval Office nearly every day to journalists who are granted the privilege of asking him questions for the whole world to see.”
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