Inside Trump's Surreal Presser
By Andrew Marantz
The East Room, with its chandeliers and gold damask drapes, is the largest room in the White House; it might also be, to use a word favored by the President, the most elegant. Last Thursday, President Trump invited the White House press corps to assemble there so that he could debase them, while relying on them to air said debasement on live television—the mass-media equivalent of the schoolyard move known as “Why are you hitting yourself?”
The event was to begin at noon. At 11:50 a.m., the press corps stood outside the West Wing in the cold. Normally, a seating plan for an East Room press conference is drawn up well in advance. This conference, organized on a Presidential whim, would be a free-for-all. A few correspondents tried to elbow their way toward the front of the pack.
“O.K., guys, nice and orderly,” a press aide said.
“We’ll get orderly when you’re orderly,” one reporter muttered.
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http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/inside-trumps-surreal-press-conference