Transcripts For CSPAN White House Correspondents On The Press The Presidency 20180221

From the White House Correspondents Association on the presidency and the press. This is just over an hour. Hello . Is everybody ready . If dr. Kumar would sit down. Thank you all for staying for the second panel. After that lively beginning. Im alexis simendinger, and i am a correspondent with the hill. I am delighted to be able to talk to colleagues that i know well and have known over several White House Administrations. Margaret from bloomberg. Steve from reuters. Before i get started, could each of you run down the row and remind everybody of how many president s you have covered . I know you are really young, but go ahead. Steve i started covering the midpoint of george h. W. Bushs white house. I came in at 1990, before cell phones were a thing. I have covered five president s. Alexis five. Margaret i moved back to washington in 2005, so i was here for the second part of the presidency of george w. Bush. But i did not start covering the white house fulltime until barack obama, Whose Campaign i had covered, won with election and was inaugurated. Ive been there ever since. Two terms of obama. 13 months of donald trump. Alexis peter . Peter i came in in 96 1996. Alexis this is my fifth president. Lets start where also, to please tweetody, whcs. I wanted to talk to margaret first. The White House Communications and White House Correspondents Association Work Together to try to enlarge access. They do that no matter who is president of the association. Every president is different. Margaret, in the beginning of a first year, what are some of the successes and almost educating a new administration of what the expectations are and what their options are . What are some of the Success Stories . Margaret i thank my dear friend jeff mason. I was his wing man. Look, with any new administration, you have the challenge of them wanting to do things their way and find their footing. In this case, you have an additional couple of layers because the point of the campaign is i do not care how everyone does things, this is how i will do them. And then there was the steve blowtheholethingup thing. There is a part of the brand, part of the pitch to the President Trump base. Saying this is how we have always done it is the worst. Just because it was done wrong, we will do it differently. There was kind of a political wind towards the idea of him speaking about changing everything. It was the same challenge, but with an added degree of difficulty. There is a reason for journalism and the American Public. To be in the room for oval office praise and such. There is an incentive for a White House Administration to continue those traditions as well. I think the challenge was to be able to facilitate those conversations and encourage them to understand the letters and the processes before making any changes without insisting on it in a way that actually was counterproductive. There was a real tenuous kind of dance. It was complicated by the fact that in a typical white house, the formation of that relationship begins in the final five months, six months before the inauguration. Once you know who the nominee is, we start having these indepth conversations with what is going to become the Transition Team if they win, about how you organize pools and how things work. It is a behindthescenes kind of thing that readers and viewers do not see. It is a for the state kind of thing. There is a degree of continuity with people who have covered administrations for a long time. The desire was to try to have constructive conversations behind the scenes, even though in front of the camera, we understood part of the president s approach was to say i do not care how things have ever been before. I have to say that a lot of those practices remain. And you can see that. We are still in the Briefing Room. When the a period briefings went off camera. Now they are back on camera because the president sees the value in the briefings. What are some areas that have been very frustrating . I think this is obvious, but no reporter thinks it is a good idea when a sitting president denigrates the free press publicly and tells people that they cannot believe facts that are true. That is not good. That is not something we control, but it is something that we can say is not good. It is not good. It has been a year since the last formal, full, official News Conference, the sort of thing that is open press and lasts around 45 minutes to an hour. President trump did not favor those. He favors different kinds of settings. They tend to be cool settings, a spray at camp david, a spray at the oval office, that turns into a 30 minute questionandanswer, 56 minute mark 56 minute remark by him. It is not right to say that we never get to ask him questions. We get to ask him questions all the time, but they are not in what has been a traditional setting. As a result of the venues he tends to favor, the pool, which is either 13 people on the road or 21 if it is inhouse, the pool has taken on disproportionate significance or point of access fan and man of access than in recent years. It is frustrating to a lot of people in the pool. I think the association believes it is better to have questions been no questions. The white house correspondents should have a shot rather than a giveandtake with the president. Alexis the one and only formal News Conference was so interesting because i left the room thinking he enjoyed this. He called on the reporters themselves, as opposed to getting a note from the press secretary about who to call on. I thought he would do this more and we have not seen him do more of that. Can you talk about two things why do you think the president has not done it, and what different kinds of reporters and questions is he getting in those short exchanges with reporters there every day, as opposed to a more formal News Conference, where you have various News Agencies and outlets asking different kinds of questions . Does anybody have an idea why he stopped doing it . When i would guess that george w. Bush was complaining about people p caulking at press conferences, this president also does not like to be challenged in that format where you are sort of oneonone with him in front of a huge audience. I think he likes to keep us off balance a bit with his q a in the oval office, the cabinet room, the departure from marine one where the cameras are going and it is noisy. I think he prefers that. The questions are shorter and less confrontational. Alexis do you have any thoughts on it yourself in terms of the scrum versus the formal peter whatever works for a president works for a president. I do not have a problem with that. One thing i thought was bad or did not particularly like about the Obama White House is how they got rid of the regular interactions that we have with the president of the United States. Whole controversies would come and go without ever having heard the president s voice on them. By the time we got to have an actual News Conference or an interview with a particular news outlet, we will have had three or five iterations of some big event without having heard his voice. I thought that was a mistake. If i had to pick between acting questions three or four times a week versus having a big formal east room, i am in favor of the meat and potatoes lets hear him more often. Alexis all of you have interviewed President Trump. He is an interesting interview. Martha kumar has numbers about how frequently trump has done interviews. He has done 86 in his first year. President trump did 162. President obama did 162. Talk a little bit about what an interesting, unique interview he can be. This is two wires and print, which is different than asking a tv anchor about an interview. Peter we had a few interviews with him early on. Then he stopped talking to us. I think he stopped talking to news anchors in general. Thent think he talked to journal or post or print outlets often. That is a good point. The ones who had longer news outlets. Alexis talk about interviewing donald trump. You have interviewed other president s, and he is an unusual interviewee. Steve it is quite fun. You go into the oval office and you sit in chairs in front of the grand, resolute desk. He has a wooden console to summon someone. There is a red button on that. He likes to push that to order a diet coke and will offer you one if you like. Lot on policyus a issues, financial and foreignpolicy, and he will answer a question but then drift away into other areas sometimes. You have to be careful to pull him back to the topic at hand. He will talk to you. He says you have 30 minutes. You will end in 55. He will go for a long time. Sometimes, people come in and out. One time, Vice President pence came in and then walked out. Then we kept going. It is a lot of fun. Alexis margaret, do you want to add to that . Margaret i had one formal sit down with the president. It was like a driveby interview. You are in a pool, you ask him a question, then he will ask positive and you write it down. What stood out to me is that he is very gracious. He stands up, shake your hand. Come in, make yourself comfortable. He wants you to feel good in his space. You do have to reel him back a little bit. It was a halfhour interview. 20 minutes in, we had only done two questions. I was like, oh man. My reporting partner, jennifer jacobs, and i had a lot of questions. At a certain point, we said we have to do a speed around. Are you up for a speed round . We did 10 other questions in six minutes, and we wrote eight stories. He said he was open to talking to kim jongun directly. We were like, what . Ut we did not say that we were like, please dont show any reaction. Just act like this is normal and we can talk about it later. [laughter] margaret we wrote like, eight stories. It was an insane day. He knew that he was flipping things up. You could tell he was enjoying that. It was around the 100day mark. The pace and strategy may have changed a bit. The one thing i remember, we write this kim story. 20 minutes later, the press office walks it back. They were all different around that time. Steve the ones we did our largely hope hicks. Hope is always there. She is like the trusted lieutenant. Margaret nobody tried to redirect that. He is in charge of his interview. Alexis you did an interesting interview. There were three in the room and you were doggedly trying to talk about policy. He was easily diverted. Peter this was july of last year. It was maggie and michael and myself. It was so casual. Oh, maggie got an interview and she brought a couple of her boys. Maggie happened to be hanging around the Briefing Room. It was very casual, much more spontaneous than previous white houses. Others have been very disciplined. I do not like to be interrupted. His first answer would be 13 minutes. And you had 20. With President Trump, he does not mind if you interrupt him. You kind of have to if you want to keep him on course. He will veer off in all sorts of directions. But you cannot be too inflexible because some of those tangents are pretty interesting. He said something in passing about Jeff Sessions and refusal recusal. We knew from our own reporting that he thought that was a mistake. I asked if that was a mistake, and boom, he was off to the races about how Jeff Sessions should have never done that, it was a mistake, and he would never have appointed Jeff Sessions if he knew that he was going to do that. Not what we went into the interview expecting to get. We walked out thinking that out of most president ial interviews, i thought, what is the lead there . Normally, they repeat the same thing over and over. They are disciplined about their talking points. You knew what obama was going to say. You knew what bush was going to say. With this guy, what is the lead there . Eight things that could be a lead. You have to be aggressive enough to try to control the conversation so it does not completely go off the rails. Also, give him a chance to talk. He is going to Say Something that you did not expect him to say. The last thing i will say, people will say, gosh, you let him off the primrose path. In our interview, he went off the record from time to time. He was very conscious of what he was saying and that it was on the record. It was not that we were somehow ambushing him into saying something. Margaret the one thing that i began to understand after that interview experience, it has only been reinforced, is that you can have what would normally qualify as a great interview where its like, wow, he just made a lot of news. But at the end of the week, half of those positions are not positionly the anymore, or they were just a test. I wont say there is no value in the interview. There is always value in talking to the american president. Samet does not mean the thing. Peter true, but a slight counter in that, with previous president s, i did not think i would get anything out of it. I never got any revelation with interviews from other president s because they are so disciplined. What mike said earlier is correct. This president , you are going to get what he thinks. He is not holding back. It is a window into his thinking. Interviews are more valuable than a lot of times. Alexis before the next question, some journalists have gotten phone calls from the United States because he wants to revise or extend. Have you gotten phone calls from him . Peter yes. This is embarrassing. This is a terribly embarrassing story. Steve tell it. [laughter] peter its awful. He wanted to call one day because he was upset about everybody thinking that he was upset about the russian probe. He really wanted us to know that he was not upset about the russian probe. So all these people who think you might be upset about the russian probe, let it be known he is not upset about it. He called, and i had never once had a call from a president in the twentysomething years doing this. I will confess i was on msnbc at the time. I hit the button. I cannot answer that. I am on television. It kept ringing. Im like, who is calling . Stop it. Looked down, and maggie is now texting me saying, what are you doing . Answer the phone. It is the president of the United States calling you. I did not answer and he did not call back. [laughter] see, a terrible story. Alexis peter, he will see this and he will call you after he watches this on cspan. I get this question a lot and i am sure that all of you do. There is so much information and different sources of information. We have been talking about access. Everyday people ask me, how do you as a reporter trust the information you are getting . Because you are trying to tell a story about something you described as having a shelf life of yogurt sometimes. When yogurt margaret yogurt can last a month. Alexis ok. Peter do not go to margarets house. [laughter] alexis can you all describe, when you talk to anonymous touch allow do you the different parts of the elephant and say, i know this story . Steve look at the john kelly story. How much trouble is he in . You get a different story from various officials. You have to be very careful describing his situation. Somebody said he was going to resign. I was never quite sure what he did. But we did try to reflected in the reporting. It is very hard sometimes. Margaret i am a policy politics reporter. I really like meaty foreign policy. The parlor games have never been my goto thing anyway. I have never really liked that about covering the white house. It is like there is a dread factor in this part of the job because what you have identified is always true in any white house, but more true now because there are 2, 3, 5 columns of different opinions, different desires, different loyalty structures. People are still trying to kill people. Not as bad as a year ago, but they still are. It is not my favorite kind of journalism. I do not enjoy that kind of reporting. Alexis even if you wanted to do a substantive story about trade and you talk to people in the white house about trade, you would have 16 different versions of what the president s perspective is. Margaret the answer to your question is very carefully. It veryou report carefully, and with kathy ott, and with a constant sense that what you are reporting is only as good as the sources that you have . No matter who the president is, you should be mindful about this kind of thing anyways. Background reporting is always rife with these things. It is important to be transparent with the public about the fact that what you are reporting might be true. It is your best effort to tell people what you believe is going on based on as thorough a job as you can possibly glean. Those are the limitations of reporting. Alexis do you have experiences you want to share about that . You have a lot of experiences with different president s. Steve every white house has people with different perspectives. More so in this one, because there is only one person that understands President Trump and that is President Trump. And maybe not always then. In november, we left the paper with a story about the white house having a plan to push out Rex Tillerson and replace him. Guess what . It is february and he is still here. Was the story wrong, or did they have a plan that they simply did not execute . Careful thate something that may be in the plans today does not show up in the plans tomorrow, and make caveat and out give the reader the full limitations of our understanding. Alexis all of us have at one time or another the idea of a white house using the press as a foil. Sarah and mike had an Interesting Exchange over that concept. Can you talk about how you dealt with the idea of understanding that the president wants to use the press as a foil and talking about fake news, and how you translate in your own minds and deal with thato concept and the fact that the president and the white house are often presenting information that is not accurate, that is inaccurate, and that some people say is purposely peter there is the hostility issue and the back issue. Alexis talk about being the target of peter for those of you who are not looking at your phones, he has already targeted cnn and msnbc. The people who say this has a broad impact on society and the credibility of the media and so forth, i get their point. In terms of my job, worrying about working as a reporter in the white house, it does not have that much impact. It is theater, as mike said. Take news, he says failing New York Times, and he calls us in and has interviews. I do not get worked up about the namecalling. I would get worked up if the namecalling led to limitations on access and ability to do our jobs. If he says, lets get nbcs license, if he were to follow up on Something Like that, that would use huge concern that would be a huge concern. When jeff was in charge, talking about kicking us out of the leftwing or limiting briefing, those are all concerning. The namecalling does not bother me that much. It is what it is. He will come back and give a rally someplace. He will be like, media this and people screaming at you to tell the truth. Cnn sucks and all that. It is an intimidating moment. He comes back onto the plane and asked if everybody had a good time. He wants to make sure everyone is having a good time. It is hard to take that it is genuine, but also not too serious at the same time. It just depends on the moment. Alexis do you have more concerns, margaret . Margaret i do have concerns because i think it has a negative impact. We are reporters. We are not here to be friends with the president and have the president like you. It has never been about that with any president. Have concerns about its impact on peoples ability to trust information. I think that can hurt individual people who need the information the most, and it can lead to a breakdown of the fabric of society, but i also think that is not really our job. Our job is to report the news. It is more important than ever that people who are journalism advocates and activists, people who are freespeech activists, regular people who believe in this speak out and support us. This week out and support us. We need their support. We cannot always be talking about it and be doing our job. Our job is to get information and to write fair and truthful, wholesome coverage that is sometimes critical and always shines a light, and helps people understand the choices the government is making, decisions the government is making. It makes it harder to do our jobs, that is ok. That is what we signed up for. It is an important time to be a journalist. It is a fulfilling time to be a journalist. But i do worry about the impact of it. There is a segment of American Society that we, as individual correspondents and the association hear from on twitter or email who say, why dont you boycott the briefings . How can you go to the briefings . How can you cover someone who has so little regard for you . I appreciate the sentiment, but it is a fundamental misunderstanding of our job. We are not there to be liked or appreciated. We are there to get information to share with the public. If we have to do it under a under unpleasant circumstances, we will do it. It is a real mistake to somehow think that you should cover the white house more when things seem nicer or easier. That is not what the job is about. Steve there were some scary moments during the campaign. When he would say these things, he would get the crowd excited, and sometimes we would feel threatened in some ways. But over the months, we have seen how accessible he has been. Like peter says, we deal with rhetoric. He does not like us, he is trying to cover up he does not want to answer questions so he calls us fake news. But the accessibility is there. He has not kicked us out. We are still in the building. We still have a pool around him at all times. In that sense, we are getting good coverage. Peter the danger cannot be what he says we are, which is the opposition. That is not our role. The idea that we play into that, we cannot do that. It is not our job to argue. It is our job to cover him. Alexis that leads to this other question i was asking. We have seen news organizations more assertively take on the role of opposition, to even say that the president is telling a lie or the white house is telling a lie. Describe what you think the difference is when a press corps is Holding Public officials to account versus labeling. Peter i think that is our job as an independent institution in society. It is our job to be a treat squad and a factcheck. That responsibility is for every president that i have covered. We spent months debating whether bill clinton was telling the truth. It is not that we did not spend a lot of time examining and scrutinizing his words for what it is. It is more institutionalizes now. We need to find ways of helping leaders readers sort through it so we have more institutionalized versions. The Fact Checking columns have discovered that this president has made more false statements and more distorted things than other president s have. Sarah wants to say 90 negative coverage. The coverage is following what we are given. If he says things that are not true, we have to say it is untrue. It is not our fault. That does not make us the opposition, and we have to be careful about crossing that line. Alexis let me ask about the briefing. Martha was talking about misconceptions about the briefing. You are saying how important it is to you and bloomberg to be able to delve into substance in the Briefing Room or anywhere else. And we have colleagues here who would love to get their substantive questions answered and may not have any other venue to do that than the Briefing Room. Can you talk about the challenge of trying to get substantive answers . If you do not get a chance to talk to the president and are trying to talk to others in the agencies or departments, what is the technique . Steve what we do is ask to talk to the experts. Sometimes that will happen. One time, we asked about who is the expert on this when it comes to the fed chair. We talked about it off the record. The National Security council has been very good about setting up briefings to talk about syria, afghanistan, iran. It does not happen often enough, but it is there. There is a way to get information. We do not hear as much from the principles. H. R. Mcmaster, john kelly, that would be helpful to hear from those people. The briefing, as you can see, is dominated by theatrics. If it were longer, they might get into more substance towards the end. As of now, that is how it is. Margaret i just feel that the briefing is a valuable institution because it is an opportunity at least a few times a week to ask questions that the public can hear and see and have the administration respond to those in a way that the American Public can see. It is probably not going to be substantive, nuanced, openupyourheart kind of response, but it is something. As you and martha point out, we take for granted that Everybody Knows this. Everybody does not know this. It is a fraction of the way you do your job, is that question. Three or four people might ask a question. The president or press secretary might make it clear that they will not answer that question that day. You get the answer in a different way or you write a story saying that they refuse to say what their deposition is. In any body of reporting, as a white house is doing something and you are trying to find out what theyre doing, you ask the white house, you look through ae federal register, you do foia, you ask people from the same party in congress, opposing party in congress, you ask the pentagon. Everybody is turning on each other. That is how you do it. The briefing is a little part of it, but it is not the whole thing. If they are obvious getting in a obffing a few skating uscating in a briefing, the public can see that. Peter the Briefing Room is more about accountability than information. It is one opportunity that the public has to ask questions and have the answer be recorded on the record. It does not mean they will answer satisfactorily or that we will get as much information. The idea of getting rid of the briefing, i am sympathetic to the frustration, but i think it is a terrible idea. This is about the most powerful person on the planet being forced through his spokesperson to respond, each day, hopefully, to important concerns. They do not have to give important information. But if they do, we get to judge them for it. Everything would be anonymous, background, whatever. There would be no accountability. Alexis let me ask a few more questions before we open it up to questions. I want to ask about technology. In that time that we have covered the white house, there have been hard line phones, faxes, pagers, email and cell phones and encrypted texts. The beauty of encrypted texts. Without revealing your sources and methods, can you talk about how Technology Helps you reach the people that you need now, even if the president is trying to reach you while you are on a tv set . Can you talk about how technology has helped you do your job . Steve it is really helpful to be able to text people directly. You do not have to go through a middle person who might stop you or what have you. Back to go all the way 30 years ago there were no cell phones i was on a trip to japan with president george h. W. Bush. He got ill. Marlon fitzwater was the press secretary at the time, and marlon was out at dinner with reporters. The waiter came up to marlon and said, im sorry to tell you that your president has died. [laughter] steve we were back in the press center. We knew that something bad had happened, but we did not know what it was. We could not call anybody because we were overseas. Marlon came rolling in and finally got some answers. If you fast forward to now, we have everything but wifi on air force one. It has made it great. Margaret yes. I feel there is no real substitute for an actual conversation, preferably in person. I think that is the most valuable in terms of building some kind of relationship of trust with somebody, but also in terms of understanding the nuance of their language or what they mean to be saying. Even if it is encrypted, you just are not you are having more linear conversations that way. They are not as thorough. It is harder for them to go in different directions. The white house is not an exact science. There is a lot of stuff going on every day in any white house. There are things that are happening, there are things that did not happen on purpose and things that just slipped away. It is harder to learn about that in a text. Peter it reminds me of the story in the 1960s when the New York Times was having an outing at the baltimore orioles. The big jumbotron said, New York Times, call your office. There were no cell phones, no pagers, no nothing. Technology is an enormous resource in doing our job. It is also a ball and chain. There is no escaping it. This thing goes off at 5 00 in the morning now with the president telling us what he is thinking. It is a great thing in a lot of ways. I wish he would sleep late a little bit. Each presidency changes with the technology. It increases the velocity and the pace. I dont know that it has given us you have more access in some ways to direct people, but when i started with clinton, i just called people and they actually took the phone calls. Now i feel like i can never get anybody to take phone calls. They are always running from meeting to meeting. Sarah gets out of one meeting and has about 150 emails. It is hard. I called them every day around 5 00 to see if there is anything breaking that i am not aware of. It has been years since i had that kind of regular interaction with a press secretary. Alexis you brought up twitter. Twitter is a tool for all of us, and certainly the president of the United States. Many organizations have mobilized hire armies of people, young, smart reporters, editors, to monitor what is going on on twitter. Can you talk about have you in your reporting tried to sift out what you are going to chase and follow up . Sometimes you can read twitter and see which one the president wrote and which ones were written by the staff. The emulation is pretty good, but it is not quite exact. Talk about what it means to you to sort out for yourselves what it is you are going to follow. Steve to talk about his tweets for a second, our first person in the office in the Washington Bureau would come in at 7 00, but when he started tweeting so early, we now have someone come in at 6 00 to start monitoring the tweets. Breaking upnews until 11 00 at night. There is a brief window when something is not happening. The tweet storm over the weekend, you take that very seriously because you know he is bothered by the russian probe and the indictments. He does not feel like he is getting a fair shake. You take those very seriously. He does have official tweets talking about the tax cuts and his visit to x city. But when he starts talking about fake news, he is blowing off some steam. You have to ignore some of the stuff. Those are the ones i ignore. Margaret the one thing that has outside of theis tweets giving you this unprecedented window into what the president seems to be thinking, it also allows one individual to control the narrative. Much more than before. When somebody blames the fbi for the death of children, you cannot ignore the tweet. That is a news cycle for a day and a half. What a president has said has always been very important, particularly in their first term. Particularly before the midterms. But the singular dominance of this one story, it has basically obliterated any other news, if you watch news on tv or if you get your news from holding a paper and looking at the front page, if you are interested in Energy Policy or what is happening in syria, you can find it, but if you want it the easy way, it is all overwhelmingly, all news is about what the president said. As a journalist who is interested in other subjects, it is frustrating. It must be frustrating for news consumers as well. That is one of the complicated effects of twitter that we have not come to terms with yet. Peter sarah said she was frustrated that we did not focus on substance. I get her point. I can only imagine what it is like to be a press secretary. Thank goodness that will never happen. If we focus on something other than the substance they want us to focus on, it might be because we are trying to respond to what the president is saying on twitter. It seems to me that the first point of changing that, if they wanted to change that, would be about twitter. You cannot realistically say, i want you to talk today about our medicaid policy, even though the president just accused the fbi for being responsible for the shooting of children. Im sorry, we not going to ignore that. It is not something we will ignore to focus on ever what we decide to be the talking point of the day. We will always lose to shark week. We just will. I sympathize, but i think they are looking the wrong direction. I appreciate that sarah brings up the subject matter. It is not my interest to discourage the tweets. The tweets are very newsy and revealing. When is the last time we had a president talk to us about what he really thought . Alexis it is original. Peter its original. Alexis lets stop there and take a few questions. This is eric. Do you know eric . [indiscernible] do you feel your news organizations are adequately staffed to handle the enormous amount of news coming out . Peter good question. When i started at the washington post, we had two white house reporters. 9 11,t up to three after four around the time of obama, and we are up to six now, at the times, anyway. The bureau is up to 50 total staff. Do i feel like we have enough . No. On any given day, there are other stories we could be doing. I wish we were. It is like a triage situation. We try to pick and choose which one has the bullet to the head, which has a bullet to the chest. The one that you can really stick to get done in the time important andis meaningful and affects the readers and all that, but it is never enough. Margaret we have six fulltime white house reporters on my team. In my booth, as we like to say. It is an across the newsroom effort. We set it up so that at any hour of the night, whichever editing desk is in charge, if it is a trump tweet, it is flagged to see whether it is important enough. I feel great about the resources that my company has dedicated to fulsome,l sun robust coverage. Not just what is happening at the white house or the news of the day, but the deeper, more substantive stuff. There is a lot and we are all really tired. Nobody sleeps. I will sleep about four or five hours. I think at the large operations, like the global newsroom operations, there has been a redirection of assets to rise up to the moment, to the time we are in. I really sympathize with my hereagues and friends tonight who are oneman bands or twoman bands who work for a regional cable or a regional paper or publication where you are the only white house correspondent, i think it would be almost impossible to ever feel that you could get your hands around all of it. It is such a firehose of information to be one or two people. I have hundreds of people in my company who can help me when there is a major, breaking story about the white house. Even then, sometimes it is like, how will we manage everything . Alexis steve, reuters is also reaching out across the world. Can you talk about that . Steve we have stories that we work with and bureaus around the world. We deal a lot with seoul, south korea. We are constantly talking to our european friends, also in the middle east with the serious story syria story. It never ends. Every department in our bureau gets sucked into the trump story during the course of the day. [inaudible] steve oh, yeah. We set up a separate trump Investigation Team to handle just that story. It touches the whole bureau. Alexis any other hands . Tell him who you are. Do ever feel like if you take a day off, you will miss everything . Have you had a break . Peter i am a believer in vacation. I believe you have to check out. I took a week off or two weeks off. Its only a couple days to realize there will be more. Do not worry. When you get back, something will happen. I think you are right about the Mental Health. Stop thinking about your job for a while. Alexis lets go to another question. Over here. Im just wondering that if it is harder to use that because the white house has internally divided about some of these questions about what the facts are. Steve we will say that. We will also add the context of different opinions within the administration over trade. We make note of that in the story. It is not like an opinion piece that we write. It is context that lets you understand that there is a division of opinion on things. During the campaign, there was there was not one person who did not know his date. A lot of people said he got a lot of off and from the press of the reporting of what he did all the time to time. Do you feel like the press is helping trump . Steve we are just covering the news. There is a lot of it. Margaret you were asking about the campaign. I think that is a fair question. Can you call into a morning show in they just take you . That is all prologue and now we are 30 months in. 13 months in. He is not one of 17. He is the one. He is adept at understanding how to shape and narrative and a something newsy. We are in the business of covering news. It is not a question of whether or not to cover it. It is how to explain to readers what is rhetoric, what is substance. Why you need to know this and why it matters. Go ahead. [inaudible] you mentioned earlier this president relies heavily on events that are not accessible to most of the press corps. What would you suggest to those of us who are not fortunate enough to work for outlets that have that level of regular access and are not a priority for this press office . How are we supposed to do our jobs when, in a lot of ways, people who are getting the access our content with it and the rest of us are routinely ignored . How are we supposed to do our jobs just as well . Margaret i know that is a real frustration. Look, a few things i would say. You should always encourage the president , press secretary, whether it is behind the scenes or on twitter. The reports are document for all journalists. It is for all of us. It is for the public and reporters to use. I would not say people are content with it. I am not content with it. Given the opportunity for some people to be able to ask questions of the president versus no people, there is value in some people asking questions. Some associations, continuously urging sarah sanders, the administration to expand access to hold full News Conferences, to make the president accessible to all of the press. That is not something we have ever stopped asking for and i find there is value in it. There is also the most important reporting of any white house that you dont have to be in a room with the president to ask him. There is investigative reporting, the narrative and expository reporting, the analysis reporting that all of us can do. I want to up everyone to be able to get access to ask the president questions that matter to them. I know it is frustrating [inaudible] a lot of the times the questions being asked are not the questions we would ask. Alexis that is not a new problem. Margaret it is not. Every president handles president obama did slightly more News Conferences but president obama did not encourage the pool did not get the questions either. That information there are a few venues which are open press. You have to wear your elbow pads. If you go out there at 7 00 in the morning or whatever, there is a decent chance that he will stop on his way out to the chopper. It does not feel dignified to do that. It is an incredible time suck to do that. But having a chance to ask that question, it is a way to do it that did not exist with barack obama. For whatever it is worth, as an association, we are committed, and board is committed to asking for this administration to make the president more accessible in briefings or News Conferences, and i do think sarah does deserve some kudos and credit for bringing cabinet officials to the briefing. They do not only take questions of the first row. They go all around the room. In general, i agree with your frustration. What has become the de facto News Conferences, i would rather them become accessible to the rankandfile. Alexis that is a good place to end. I want to thank the White House Correspondents Association, peter baker of the New York Times. Thank you very much. I learned a lot. [applause] [crowd noise] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] during a metal of developed ceremony at the white house, President Trump announced he signed a memorandum directing sessions to propose a rule outlawing bump stocks. He spoke about the recent School Shooting in parkland, florida and school safety. Heres a look. As we come together to recognize these brave americans, i know all of us here today are grieving for the community of parkland in the great state of florida. We are working very hard to make. Ense of these events on saturday and met with some of the survivors and their families and i was moved greatly. Heartbroken for the families whose loved ones who were cruelly torn from them forever. We cannot imagine the depth of their anguish, but we can pledge the strength of our resolve. And we must do more to protect our children. We have to do more to protect our children. This week i will be holding a number of discussions with students, local leaders and Law Enforcement to develop concrete steps that we can take to secure our schools, safeguard our students and protect our communities. Priorityfety is a top for my administration. That is why when governors from across the nation visit the white house next week, we will need discussing what the federal and state governments can do to keep our students safe. This includes implementing commonsense security measures and addressing Mental Health issues. Including better coordination between federal and state Law Enforcement to take swift action when they are warning signs. In addition, after the deadly shooting in las vegas, i directed the attorney general to clarify whether certain bump stock devices like the one used in las vegas are illegal under current law. That process began in december and just a few moments ago, i signed a memorandum directing the attorney general to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns. I expect that these critical regulations will be finalized, jeff, very soon. The key and all these efforts, as i said in my remarks, the day after the shooting is that we cannot really take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference. We must actually make a difference. Cliches and past tired debates and focus on evidencebased solutions and security measures that actually work and that make it easier for men and women of Law Enforcement to protect our children and to protect our safety. In the aftermath of this evil massacre, our spirits have been lifted by the accounts of at the Marjory Stoneman douglas high school. Coaches, teachers, lawenforcement officers and others who have shown us that the forces of love and courage are always stronger than the forces of evil and hate. Washington journal live everyday with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up, we will discuss u. S. Foreign relations and Trump Administration with jake sullivan. We will talk about rebuilding the nations infrastructure with the president and ceo of associative builders and contracts. Were live in oakland city for the next up on the cspan bus 50 capitals tour. Mary fallin will join us to talk about the key poet policy issues. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern wednesday morning. Join the discussion. Coming up wednesday, a look at the Economic Impact and cost of Global Cybercrime in 2018. We will be live at 8 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan2. Former florida senator bob graham is part of a discussion wednesday looking at how to improve education and prepare students to become more politically engaged citizens. Hosted by the center for making progress and generation citizen, it is live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan. Series,ns history landmark cases season two starts monday at nine clock p. M. Intern with the look at 1819. Exploring this case are sarah mark killen back. Cases like monday cspan orm. Monday on listen to the free cspan radio app. For background on each case, order a copy of the companion book. It is available for a dollars . 95 plus shipping and handling just available for 8. 95 plus shipping and handling. Represent. Us hosted the inaugural unrig the system summit. The opening session included actress Jennifer Lawrence interviewing former federal Election Commission chair Trevor Potter on how politicians push legal limits. This portion of the event from new orleans is just over an hour. [applause] it is an honor to introduce our first speaker. [applause] buddy roemer is a louisiana native, a former member of congress and served as governor of louisiana from 19881992. 19881990 two. He was a president ial candidate in 2012 with a platform centered on on rigging