ABC News Claims There Is A Constitutional Right To Get Questions At A Trump Press Conference

Yesterday, I posted on why the media has not right to expect to be treated as anything but a hostile force by the administration so long as it deliberately positions itself as the opposition party. Jay Caruso followed up with an analysis of a couple of fatuous tweets by the fatuous Chuck Todd on why we should all be exercised over Trump basically ignoring them. The stupid condensed and crystallized last evening on ABC News:

.@matthewjdowd says press conference gave “amazing and spectacular insight” into Pres. Trump and his state of mind today. pic.twitter.com/PM9jHf3oVi

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 16, 2017

Via the Daily Caller:

During Wednesday’s press conference, Trump limited questions to two non-mainstream media outlets: the Christian Broadcasting Network and Townhall.

Dowd argued that Trump is “shutting down part of the First Amendment by not taking questions that are going to be any way antagonistic in this.”

“I think he thinks relying on his Twitter feed, and sending it out to the millions of people that subscribe to it, and then dealing with very cozy press in this is going to be the way to get through this,” Dowd said.

To put the best possible face on this is to call it bullsh**. While the press is given special protections under the US Constitution the press has no constitutional role to play in our governance. For the first 130 years of the Republic presidents did not give press conferences. The presidential press conference is an invention of Woodrow Wilson. Whether Trump has press conferences or takes questions is irrelevant to just about everyone in the nation except to the news media. What Boyle is demanding is that Trump provide not merely responses to questions that he may not want to answer, which is bizarre enough, but that he provide the media with free content that they will then repackage… in a way guaranteed to show the administration negatively… and sell. While I understand why Boyle is upset, it is more than a little unclear to me why Trump should go along with that and how the Constitution is offended by this any more than it is damaged by the Jerry Springer Show being off the air.

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