Before routine White House briefings vanished, their tone had changed. While many previous administrations—including Obama’s—had been criticized, fairly, for being less transparent than they ought to have been, all had at least acknowledged that the media served as an essential bridge between the American people and the government they had put into office. Trump’s official stand was that the media were an enemy, and his people had to demonstratively treat them as such. Spicer, during his six-month tenure as press secretary, was belligerent and openly hostile; he lied often. His successor,
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