How do you follow up on Donald Trump’s Russian-press-only White House meeting? A no American press allowed press conference might be a good encore.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a news conference with the Saudi foreign minister in Riyadh on Sunday, but he left the American media behind.
Tillerson famously inaugurated his stint as Secretary of State by banning reporters from his jaunt to Asia. Or at least almost banning them.
Although newsrooms have for decades paid the state department for airplane seats when the top diplomat travels, the secretary of state only allowed one reporter to join him on a trip to Japan, South Korea and China.
Who was that one lucky reporter who got an exclusive on the Secretary’s entire trip?
In an interview with the reporter from the conservative Independent Journal Review, a website partly owned by a top adviser to Vice-President Mike Pence, Tillerson insisted the decision was made first for cost reasons and second for his preference to work “behind closed doors”.
The cost issue is a flat-out lie, as reporters pay for their ride. The “behind closed door” statement is just … scary. But that one reporter who went along? Worked for a “journal” Tillerson could trust to report just what he wanted.
The so-called Independent Journal Review was started by a couple of Republican party staffers, Phil Musser and Alex Skatell. The pair had previously worked for the Republican Governors Association and National Republican Senatorial Committee. Musser is also a frequent donor to Republican candidates and causes, including dropping $1,000 on Mike Pence’s gubernatorial campaign. It was Pence who suggested taking the reporter along. Meaning Musser’s donation wasn’t a bad price tag for buying an exclusive ride with the Secretary of State on his first big international trip.
The Independent Journal Review was also the source of a, later retracted, story claiming that Barack Obama had traveled to Hawaii to influence the judge who blocked Donald Trump’s Muslim ban—so obviously the perfect source to be the only window into Tillerson’s trip.
On that first trip, Tillerson noted that he didn’t care to talk to reporters …
Tillerson said he did not “have this appetite or hunger” to speak with reporters about US diplomatic missions.
The absence of reporters meant that, while there were still official press releases, the only view of many aspects of the trip were those that Tillerson chose to report. For example, the South Korean government reported that Tillerson skipped out on a dinner because he was “tired.” Tillerson later denied the report.
Without regular US reporters around Tillerson to confirm or correct that report, it circulated widely until Tillerson personally rebutted the claims.
“They never invited us for dinner, then at the last minute they realized that optically it wasn’t playing very well in public for them, so they put out a statement that we didn’t have dinner because I was tired,” Tillerson said.
The IJR reporter asked: “Are you saying they lied about it?”
“No, it was just their explanation,” Tillerson said. “I had dinner last night.”
Yeah. That’s fine diplomacy. Of course, no one was there to see it.
If Rex Tillerson screws up diplomacy and no reporters are there to see it, does it still impact the United States? Yes. Yes, it does.