Sean Spicer will no longer be taking any questions about the Russian investigation and the former FBI director who was once leading that investigation. That’s what the White House press secretary told reporters in a short, off-camera briefing Wednesday, directing reporters to contact President Donald Trump’s private lawyer, instead.
“Going forward, all questions on these matters will be referred to outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz,” Spicer said.
It’s an extraordinary step for the White House to suddenly farm out inquiries about a subject about which the president is publicly commenting on—and in this case, just hours beforehand. Spicer’s gambit likely wouldn’t have stopped the questions anyway, but Trump’s constant downplaying of the investigation on Twitter and elsewhere will ensure that.
So too will this news: Former FBI director, James Comey, plans on testifying before Congress about what he may claim was an effort by President Trump to stop the investigation. Here’s more from CNN:
Presumably it will be the Trump White House’s “war room” that will be tasked with responding to and communicating about the investigation. If there’s been movement on the creation of the war room since Axios first reported it last week, then it’s happening quietly. The announced resignation of Mike Dubke, Trump’s relatively fresh communications director, this week suggests some form of White House communications shakeup is coming.
All these changes—a war room, a shakeup, and outside counsel— won’t solve the White House’s fundamental problem: the president is his own worst enemy, new staff or no. George Will’s observation that congressional staffs take on the characteristics of their bosses over time also applies to the White House, especially this one.
Former senator Rick Santorum, whose book on “blue-collar conservatives” was part of what inspired Trump’s presidential run, told me Sunday morning that Trump needs a staff that better serves him and his agenda. But that wasn’t his message a few minutes later, when the Pennsylvania Republican went on CNN, looked straight into the camera, and spoke directly to the president, who by that point in the morning had tweeted a few times about “fake news” and leaks.
“If you stay on message, you stick to the script, you focus on policy, you drive home the messages that you talked about during the campaign and that people in America are excited about, you can be a great president,” Santorum pleaded.
