They’ve skipped the high-profile Sunday TV shows and avoided driveway chat sessions with reporters. Few who are typically eager to defend the president have appeared at all on television this month.
White House officials close to President Donald Trump are pulling off a disappearing act, remaining largely absent from public view — in the middle of the storm over impeachment.
“We invited the White House on to answer questions on the show this morning,” CNN’s Jake Tapper explained to his viewers on Sunday’s “State of the Union.” ‘’They did not offer a guest.”
It’s a well-worn strategy in the Trump White House: Senior officials conveniently manage to be elsewhere when major controversies engulf the building.
The frequent absences of Jared Kushner, the Republican president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and presidential daughter Ivanka Trump during moments of consequence have long been a running joke among their detractors.
Their detours included a trip to Florida during the partial Government shutdown. Plenty of others have jumped town during tense moments.
As Trump struggled with mounting Republican defections over his decision to declare a national emergency to pay for the stalled border wall, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney wasn’t at the Capitol cajoling his former colleagues or in the West Wing making calls. Instead, he was in Las Vegas for an annual friends and family getaway.
More recently, embattled national security adviser John Bolton scheduled a trip to Mongolia while Trump became the first sitting U.S. President to set foot in North Korea, a gesture that didn’t sit well with Bolton, who would leave the administration a few months later.
Indeed, knowing “when to be out of town” was one of the top nuggets of advice that Kevin Hassett, the president’s former top economic adviser, said he’d received from a predecessor and had to offer his successor.
The White House did not respond to questions about the tactic Wednesday. But even when they’re in Washington, many of the White House’s most visible officials have been staying out of public view, letting the president’s indignant Twitter feed and his frequent commentary drive the public conversation.
That includes White House spokesman Hogan Gidley, a frequent guest on Fox News shows and the gaggles with reporters that often follow on the White House driveway.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, an aggressive defender of the president, has not made an appearance on the driveway since a highly contentious Sept. 27 gaggle in which she berated reporters and dismissed a question about whether the White House was organising an impeachment war room.