Sean Spicer's joke press briefings: How the WH packs its press briefings with "Skypeophants"
THURSDAY, MAR 16, 2017 05:39 PM EDT
Sean Spicer’s joke press briefings: How the White House packs its press briefings with “Skypeophants”
Eight of the 20 “Skype Seat” questioners have been right-wing commentators
MATT GERTZ, MEDIA MATTERS
When the White House press corps convenes today for press secretary Sean Spicer’s daily briefing, the journalists in the room will be joined via Skype by Link to tweet
" target="_blank">Bryan Crabtree, an Atlanta-based right-wing talk radio host who wrote last year that Donald Trump is “the future of this country” and that if he was not elected president, “America as we know it is ‘done.’”
In recent columns for the conservative website TownHall.com, Crabtree has called for the purge of federal employees in response to the “system-wide effort to sabotage President Trump’s White House”; predicted that Trump will destroy the Democratic Party by “produc(ing) an economy that he has promised”; and claimed that protesters at the Women’s March on Washington were “stuck between delusional and mental instability.”
In late January, Spicer announced that he planned to occasionally provide “Skype Seats” to “a diverse group of journalists” who live outside of the Washington, D.C., area, in order to “benefit us all by giving a platform to voices that are not necessarily based here in the Beltway.” CNN media reporter Brian Stelter warned at the time that the development “could be a great thing, or it could be a way to stack the room with pro-Trump media outlets.”
Two months later, it is clear that Spicer is using this innovation to pack the briefings with what SiriusXM White House correspondent Jared Rizzi has termed “Skypeophants”: “super-friendly questioner(s) used to burn up briefing time.”
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http://www.salon.com/2017/03/16/how-sean-spicer-packs-his-press-briefings-with-skypeophants_partner/
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