White House press briefings and formal presidential press conferences have been all but replaced by “chopper talk,” the regular but impromptu question-and-answer sessions President Donald Trump holds in front of the whirling blades of Marine One, as Politico’s Michael Calderone and Daniel Lippman describe in a Thursday story. The reporters point to a series of advantages these press gaggles give the president: They allow him to pick and choose the questions from the shouting press corps that he wants to answer; make complex questions, follow-ups, and attempts to pin Trump down all but impossible; and leave journalists looking “unruly and disorderly.”
But there’s another way that “chopper talk” benefits Trump: News outlets tend to cover those press gaggles by transmitting the president’s typical stream of falsehoods to the public unimpeded. Journalists are rushing to pass along Trump’s statements without trying to verify his claims in a way that surely leaves their audience more confused and less informed.Trump constantly generates and promotes false statements, conspiracy theories, and outright lies. He’s made more than 12,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency, according to The Washington Post.