The press corps was thrown for a loop when the daily on camera briefing was changed to an off-camera, no-recording session. And CNN’s Jim Acosta, for one, wasn’t having it. During a Q&A with Brooke Baldwin after the non-briefing, Acosta went off:
“When Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary comes in and says you can’t record the video or audio from these briefings, that wouldn’t be tolerated at city council meetings. Here we have the representative of the President of the United States saying, ‘no, you can’t cover it that way.'”
Acosta then equated the current administration to bad reality TV.
It’s not even like we’re covering a White House anymore, with Kellyanne Conway and Omarosa in the briefing room off to the side of Sean refusing to be on camera. It’s like we’re covering just bad reality television, is what it feels like now.
That’s the White House behind me. The White House! And it’s just bizarre, I don’t know what world we’re living in, Brooke, where we’re standing at the White House, and they bring us into the briefing room, and they won’t answer these questions on camera, or let us record the audio. I don’t know why everybody is going along with this.
Here’s the segment:
And because he couldn’t record anything during the briefing, Acosta tweeted out this picture of his new socks.
The Spicer off-camera/no audio gaggle has begun. I can’t show you a pic of Sean. So here is a look at some new socks I bought over the wknd pic.twitter.com/wO9erspwYa
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017