Relax. It’s nothing personal.  She’s awesome.  In all the on-her-feet ways a White House Press Secretary can and must be.  She’s always remarkably well prepared and extremely nimble with the pack of yipping dogs we call the White House Correspondents Association.  So it’s nothing like that.

It’s a back office complaint — but a big one:  administrative records are, in several places, woefully out of date.  Previous White House press offices have been admirably quick turning them around.  Obama’s press office was notably good at it, and though my fingers cramped a bit typing that, it’s true.  Barely had the lies passed his lips than they were transcribed and up on the White House website.

If you are not familiar, when you go to the White House website, you navigate by choosing from a drop down menu in the upper left hand corner.  When you choose “News” you are then presented with five choices:  Articles, Briefings & Statements, Fact Sheets, Presidential Actions, and Remarks.

Articles is what you might expect:  articles Karoline or her team has found that merit note in the White House press shop’s opinion.

Fact Sheets and Presidential Actions are exactly what they sound like:  pre-packaged or pre-written items on the goings-on with the administration.  I had gone to the website this morning hoping to find a fact sheet on the events yesterday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.  I simply wanted a list of all the countries represented there.  Didn’t seem like a big ask.  Surely someone had typed it up.

Nope.

Now, M, you’re being unreasonable, you may think.  It was a whirlwind trip.  Poor Karoline hasn’t yet had time!  Bunk.  Previous press offices have had admirable production under similar circumstances. Karoline has an entire team of eager young faces with mad typing skills who could have — and should have — cranked it out, even without all the attendant details; just the countries present.  That’s all I wanted.  It’s a genuine shame it wasn’t there, as the Administration should be immensely proud of the events yesterday in both Israel and Egypt.  But that was just the Fact Sheets Section.

Back to the original complaint about administrative records, particularly (Presidential) Remarks and transcribed Briefings, being woefully out of date.  To be fair, these are the most labor intensive, because they require someone sitting there doing a bit by bit transcription, and we all know how verbose the president can be (he just had a three-hour cabinet meeting!).  And if you are thinking a computer could do it instead of a human, don’t.  Every syllable, every comma, has to be right.  This is the Leader of the Free World we’re talking about and every head of state, every enemy, may well turn their decision-making on them, being, as they are, the official transcripts on the White House website of the President of the United States.

Well… Yikes. As of writing this, the most recent entry in Remarks were from almost a month ago.  “President Trump Participates in a Press Conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer,” dated September 18th, and it’s just a link to a video.  No transcript.  This is, frankly, inexcusable.

And Karoline’s Briefings?  There’s one.  Exactly one transcript of a briefing.  And it’s dated January 29th (found on page 17).

I’m frankly amazed the White House Correspondents Association hasn’t made more of a stink about this.  They could actually do something useful, but noooo….

Here’s hoping this complaint finds its way to her.  I’d hate to see her tenure ruined by something as mundane as an intern not doing transcriptions in a timely manner.

Image: Public domain.