WASHINGTON — President Trump responded to a staggering 1,009 questions from journalists during the first month of his second term, according to a new analysis.
The tabulation, compiled by George Condon of National Journal and published Tuesday, blows away prior presidents — including Joe Biden’s first-month total of 141 questions.
Former President Barack Obama took 161 inquiries over the first 31 days of his first term in 2009.
Trump is taking far more questions than he did even in 2017, when he fielded 199 between Jan. 20 and Feb. 20 of that year.
The president has largely met with the press during Oval Office events billed as executive order signings, which serve as near-daily news conferences.
The Oval Office appearances can even occur multiple times a day and it’s common for press pool reporters to ask four or five queries apiece.
“It’s definitely a case of presidential learning,” political scientist and author Martha Kumar told National Journal.
“He’s using the Oval Office. People stop when they see a president in the Oval Office talking on their television. They want to know what he’s saying.”
Kumar, a professor emerita at Towson University in Maryland and an authoritative — if unofficial — record-keeper of presidential-press interaction data, noted that Trump more frequently phoned into friendly television programs at the start of his first term.
“He learned that that didn’t get him anything. He was just talking to the choir, and he needed to get to a broader public,” Kumar said.
Many of the latest exchanges have generated significant news.
Condon’s count indicates that Trump’s 1000th question came from Fox News producer Caroline McKee, who asked in the press cabin of Air Force One on Feb. 19″ “Do you think DC should govern itself, or do you think that governing of District of Columbia should go back to Congress?”
“I think that we should govern the District of Columbia,” Trump responded. “It’s so important, the DC situation. I think that we should run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely flawlessly beautiful. And I think we should take over Washington, DC.”
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