President Trump’s early presidency has brought unprecedented transparency to the White House. More than any other president, he wants the American people to see what he is doing in real-time.
That is why the press has been allowed to witness him signing executive orders, meeting with his Cabinet, and having an intense disagreement with a foreign leader. This accessibility is one vehicle with which President Trump is forging his own distinctive relationship with the American public.
The president is comfortable going directly to the people and positioning himself as their true spokesperson. It is remarkable how much he is willing to put on display.
On Friday, during a press availability at the start of a scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy , President Trump allowed the cameras to roll and the press to see what was a startlingly acrimonious meeting in the Oval Office. As the New York Times reported, “No president in memory has ever erupted at a visiting foreign leader in such a vituperous way on camera, not even enemies of the United States, much less a putative ally.”
But creating such a shock may have been the point. That quality compels attention.
As the meeting became more and more heated, Vice President JD Vance, who was also in attendance, accused the Ukrainian president of being ungrateful for American assistance and criticized him for litigating his version of events in front of the American media. The president had a different view.
He turned to Vance and said, “I think it is good for the American people to see what is going on. I think it is very important. That’s why I kept this going so long.”
That line, “It is good for the American people to see what is going on,” captures the essence of President Trump’s embrace of a hyper-public presidency.
That doesn’t mean that the administration won’t do anything in secret. It does mean that the president will be in almost constant communication with the public. Thus, in addition to his use of social media, during his first term, he averaged more exchanges with the press per year than any president in modern American history.
Even though he now wants to determine which members of the press will have access to the White House and other venues, President Trump craves constant press attention. The New York Post reports that “Trump has answered more than 1,000 press questions in the first month of his second term— 7 times more than Biden in the same period.”
On February 24, The National Journal’s George Condon observed that Trump started answering questions “inside the U.S. Capitol, less than an hour after taking his oath of office, when he was asked if he had any reaction ‘to the pardons President Biden did at the last minute.’ The last question—No. 1,009—(as of that date) came more than 3,000 feet above North Carolina at 9:14 p.m.