Trump Ducks Reporter Questions on Trip, Only G-7 Leader to Do So

EghtesadOnline: Donald Trump wrapped up his first foreign trip as president -- a nine-day excursion from Saudi Arabia to Sicily -- without once holding a news conference.

News ID: ۷۴۱۷۷۶

28 May 2017

That made the U.S. president the only one of the Group of Seven leaders who declined to face the press. The other six all took questions from reporters while in Sicily for the 43rd summit of major advanced economies, Bloomberg reported.

But Trump, breaking with tradition, avoided getting pinned down by a question-and-answer format in which he would face questions either about investigations at home or the nuances of U.S. foreign policy positions.

While the recent firing of FBI Director James Comey and an ongoing inquiry into ties between his campaign and Russia were subjects Trump wanted to avoid discussing, that imperative was only heightened by revelations in the closing days of the trip about the FBI’s growing interest in engagement with Russia by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Not holding a press conference marked a breach of custom at a major global event where the U.S. president traditionally faces the press at the end, and often during the trip as well. Trump capped off his trip on Saturday with a speech to U.S. troops and a handful of in-flight tweets.

Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, turned his end-of-summit news conferences into epic affairs, often taking questions from nearly every U.S. reporter who traveled on the trip. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton took questions too.

Shouted Queries

Earlier in the trip, Trump fielded one or two shouted queries from reporters at events where no questions were supposed to be allowed -- at least once with unfortunate results for the president.

At a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, a reporter asked the Israeli prime minister if he still trusted U.S. authorities with sensitive intelligence following reports that Trump had shared secret intel from Israel with the Russians during an Oval Office meeting. Trump stepped up to insist he’d never said the word “Israel” in his talks with Russian officials -- effectively confirming that nation as the source of the information.

The six other leaders in the Group of Seven -- the U.K.’s Theresa May, Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and France’s Emmanuel Macron -- each briefed reporters during the two-day session in the ancient mountain village of Taormina, on Sicily’s east coast in the shadow of Mount Etna.

Minutes after Trump and his entourage left Washington for Saudi Arabia on May 19, two news stories broke: that the president had described recently fired FBI Director James Comey as a “nut job” during his meeting with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S., and that an unnamed White House official was the target of FBI scrutiny. In the final days of the trip, it was reported that the FBI was looking at senior adviser Kushner over his contacts with the Russians.

Dodging Cameras

Four months into his term, Trump has typically taken two questions from the U.S. press after bilateral meetings at the White House. He declined to do the same during several such talks on the just-concluded trip, where he met with, among others, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Only one White House aide stood before TV cameras for a question-and-answer session during the nine days, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took a few questions during a briefing at a hotel in Riyadh a week ago.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer didn’t hold his regular daily briefings, although he answered pool reporters’ questions during an off-camera gaggle at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Economic adviser Gary Cohn briefed reporters on a few occasions on condition TV cameras were turned off; National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster joined Cohn on Saturday.

That briefing gave a taste of what Trump would have faced, as reporters asked repeatedly about Kushner, to no avail. Cohn eventually said, “We’re not going to comment on Jared. We’re just not going to.”

Trump arrived back at the White House at 9:21 p.m. Saturday, about 40 minutes ahead of the originally scheduled arrival. After the president and first lady exited their helicopter, the first question Trump got from reporters waiting on the South Lawn: “Mr. President, we hear you were trying to set up a back channel to the Russians...”