NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell Says Trump White House Lack of Transcripts Flies in the Face of Claim They Are ‘Most Transparent’ Administration

NBC News senior White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell said President Donald Trump’s administration has “diminished” the “pipeline of information” the public receives by not releasing full transcripts of the president’s words.

O’Donnell joined MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing on Thursday and brought up the transcript change during a discussion on the president baselessly claiming at the White House that there is a “white genocide” in South Africa.

O’Donnell explained:

In the briefing that’s happening now, there is someone sitting at the front of the briefing. And that person keeps the official record of all the public statements that are made and taken at the White House. And that becomes a part of the official National Archive. And it has, up until now, been a resource available to the public. Certainly, journalists, we use it all the time. But so do members of the public who wish to read and review what has been said in speeches, in question and answer periods, in various types of briefings, and so forth.

The White House has now turned to releasing video instead, and O’Donnell noted that transcripts were not released as quickly as they traditionally are even before they were scrapped altogether.

“Something we hear almost every day, that they claim to be the most transparent and in some ways they are trying to show transparency, but this is another example where they are reducing the public’s access to this kind of information, and they have not explained why,” she reported. “They say that it is available for people to look at the videos and that should be, I guess in their judgment, sufficient, but it is a change and it’s one that diminishes the pipeline of information people have about their government.”

Watch above via MSNBC.