Over the past few weeks, the White House has taken to holding fewer daily press briefings. And for the ones they are scheduling, many are being held off-camera with restrictions being placed on audio and video recordings. And reporters and outlets are not happy about it. (Who can forget the infamous CNN sketch artist?)
With the White House holding yet another off-camera briefing in which the audio was embargoed until after it was over, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith decided to straight-up mock the policy to his viewers while getting ready to play the tape.
“The news keeps breaking,” he said. “It’s almost broken. Just a minute ago, a second ago actually — a second ago — hands in the air it ended. The briefing is over. That means we can play it back for you.”
He then went on to explain to the audience why they had to wait to play the audio on the air:
“There seems to be some confusion. We’re hearing this, we get to hear it. So we’re not frustrated or upset or anything. We have complete access. We hear it all. We can’t show it to you. If we could, we would. But we can’t. That’s it. Not passing judgment in no way.”
But he wasn’t done just yet. The snark kept on flowing from Smith:
“We get to hear it. And we get to pick what we tell you and what we don’t tell you. We played it out. You can just hear it if you wanted to. If you didn’t want to, you can flip over to The Simpsons or Bugs Bunny or something. But now we’re going to play it for you. We’re going to turn the sound around and let you hear the q&a with reporters. If you want to hear it, here it is. Here you go.”
Please watch the whole thing above, via Fox News.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona
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