Among a string of tweets sent out early Friday morning, President Donald Trump threatened to stop daily White House press briefings.
The tweet followed this one:
The White House Correspondents' Association was quick to respond, condemning the proposal and stressing the importance of press briefings.
"White House briefings and press conferences provide substantive and symbolic opportunities for journalists to pose questions to officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government," the association's president, Jeff Mason, said in a statement. "Doing away with briefings would reduce accountability, transparency and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the U.S. system, no political figure is above being questioned."
Journalists questioned White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the tweet during the briefing Friday. Spicer responded by stressing the long hours the White House staff works, and how the media seems to be out to catch mistakes or discrepancies in the briefings.
"We come out here and try to do everything we can to provide you and the American people with what he’s doing on their behalf — what he’s doing to keep the nation safe — what he’s doing to grow jobs," Spicer said.
"And yet we see time and time again an attempt to parse every little word and make it more of a game of 'gotcha' as opposed to really figure out what the policies are."
Trump has spoken out against the media since early in his campaign, often accusing major news networks of propagating "fake news."
