Trump tweetstorms wash away White House press briefings

Sean Spicer, the embattled press secretary, spoke for 30 minutes Tuesday and didn't answer a number of basic questions, including whether the president believes Russia interfered in the 2016 election and whether Trump had seen the hotly debated Senate health care bill.

Once more freewheeling exchanges, briefings have been shrinking both in length and content as Trump's senior aides clamp down on information and contend with the president's own lack of message discipline and preference for speaking directly to his fan base.

White House officials believed the trip garnered good coverage even though the president eschewed a longtime presidential tradition of holding a news conference overseas and instead provided only limited public press briefings.

About the same time, probes into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign's possible role in it provided a fresh incentive for the president and White House officials to avoid question-and-answer sessions sure to be dominated by the unwelcome topic.

White House communications officials "obviously feel it has ceased to pay dividends" to follow their predecessors' press strategy, said Eric Dezenhall, who worked on President Ronald Reagan's communications team and leads a public relations firm in Washington.

"The president has a long history of communicating directly with people through social media that has worked out very well for him in the past," said Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign spokeswoman.

Like his other rallies, Trump's event Wednesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, will be attended by thousands of his fans — an audience screened and selected by his re-election campaign.

Asked whether Trump is comfortable with senators hashing out in secret the details of their rewrite of President Barack Obama's health care law, Spicer responded, "I can't say I've actually asked him."