White House Reportedly No Longer Publishing Public Summaries of Trump’s Calls With World Leaders
The White House is planning to end releasing public summaries of President Donald Trump‘s phone calls with other world leaders.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins has an exclusive report on this big shift tonight:
The White House has suspended the practice of publishing public summaries of President Donald Trump’s phone calls with world leaders, two sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN, bringing an end to a common exercise from Republican and Democratic administrations.
It’s unclear if the suspension is temporary or permanent. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
CNN’s report notes that the White House has not published any readouts of Trump calls with world leaders since his call with the prime minister of Hungary last month.
Some reporters have already weighed in on this departure from precedent:
The summaries were already very brief and generally uninformative.
But this means American journalists will need to rely on foreign readouts, rather than information from the U.S. government, and even more so on the anonymous sources that the president loathes. https://t.co/Fjm6hw1wSC
— Katie Watson (@kathrynw5) July 24, 2018
As tardy and scant as they may be, not issuing them at all would yield to foreign governments — such as #China and #Russsia — control of the narrative.
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) July 24, 2018
also it’s not like these readouts generally contain huge news. Definitely hints for tea leaf reading, always some key, well known talking points on the relationship, but often rather dry/benign.
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) July 24, 2018
[photo via Getty Images]
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