Donald Trump said lots (and lots) of thing during his hour-long town hall with Fox News's Sean Hannity on Wednesday night. This one — Trump talking about Hillary Clinton — stood out to me:
She is so protected. They are so protecting her. She hasn't had a news conference in, like, 250 days.
It couldn't be that long since Clinton has talked to the press, I thought. So, I went to the
handy-dandy tool that some guy named Philip Bump built to track how long it's been since Clinton faced the press.
258 days! Trump undersold something!
Jokes aside, it's beyond ridiculous that one of the two people who will be elected president in 80 or so days continues to refuse to engage with the press in this way.
But she does sit-down interviews! And she did a "press conference" with a moderator, um, moderating the questions!
Not good enough. Not when you are running to be president of the United States. One of the most important things when someone is offering themselves up to represent all of us is that we get the best sense we can about how that person thinks on his or her feet, how they deal with unwanted or adversarial questions. Those two traits are big parts of doing the job of president in the modern world.
