As president-elect, Donald Trump has shied away from the media as he releases a stream of Cabinet picks and White House staffers in statements, most posted to his social media platform Truth Social. He has yet to hold a press conference.
Since the election, Trump has done a handful of one-on-one interviews and delivered public remarks at an event at Mar-a-Lago. In an interview Monday with Fox News Digital, the president-elect said “in order to make America great again, it is very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press.”
Favoring social media announcements over traditional interactions with the press is not out of the ordinary for Trump, who didn’t host a general news conference until January 2017 after winning the presidency in November 2016. And President Joe Biden, whose transition occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic, also did not take wide-ranging questions from reporters during that time — and didn’t host an official news conference until three months into his presidency.
But it is a departure overall among presidents-elect. Former President Barack Obama took reporters’ questions 18 times during his transition, and former President George W. Bush did 11 times, according to NPR.
It also marks a change in his team’s overall approach to the media from his first transition, when Trump’s team would hold calls with the reporters to give daily updates on the 2016 transition.
In a statement to POLITICO, incoming White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said: “President Trump has done more interviews and press engagements than any other candidate in the 2024 elections.”