Something unprecedented happened today at the White House. White House mouthpiece, Sean Spicer, used a 10 minute recess during a televised Congressional Committee hearing, to convene a press briefing about the ongoing testimony happening live at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Spicer quickly engaged the press as foils for a largely content free filibuster that quickly ran over the short time allotted by the Committee for Director Comey to take a piss. Despite how quickly it became evident, that Trump’s White House was attempting to step on the story emerging from this electrifying hearing, CNN stayed with the pony show at the White House long after the hearing reconvened, eventually realizing they’d been played and cutting back to the hearing.
This sort of White House press offensive, in the very middle of ongoing proceedings on The Hill, has no precedent. Even back in the dark days of the Nixon impeachment, this hasn’t ever been done. But, then again, America has never had a White House placed in power, with the help of an implacably hostile foreign despot, for the single purpose of creating chaos in American politics, in order to tarnish the appeal of American democratic institutions.