NEW NORMAL

Sean Spicer Warns Media: ‘Business as Usual Is Over’

Incoming WH press secretary suggests Facebook, Twitter town halls could replace news conferences.

In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Donald Trump's incoming press secretary Sean Spicer declared that when it comes to the White House's relationship with the media, "Business as usual is over." Spicer, who previously served as communications director for the RNC, would not promise that Trump will "keep up a regular and as energetic a series of press conferences as previous presidents," in Hewitt's words. "I think the thing that you’ve seen with Donald Trump is that he doesn’t, he doesn’t look to the past and say I’ve got to conform to these precedents," Spicer said. "He figures out what’s the best way. And so maybe we do, you know, a series of press conferences, but maybe we do some town hall, you know, Facebook town halls. Maybe we go out and solicit input from Twitter. I don’t, I mean, the answer is we’re looking at a lot of things."

Hewitt also asked Spicer if Trump would subject himself to interviews with left-leaning "critics," giving as an example MSNBC host and The Daily Beast contributor Joy-Ann Reid. Spicer would not speak to Reid specifically, but did say that Trump sees value in speaking to media outlets that may not agree with him 100 percent of the time. "We’re not going to win a battle whether The New York Times is going to ever give us a fair shake or not," he said. "But we recognize that there’s, you know, a few thousand readers or so left that still look at The New York Times, and so it’s worth, probably, talking to them I think. And so, we’re going to utilize various outlets to continue the conversation."

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Matt WilsteinSenior Editor

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