John Avlon: Trump ‘Clearly’ Has a ‘Discomfort with Transparency’

STELTER: To the other John, John Avlon, what do you think the motivation is for avoiding press conferences, or none FOX interviews for that matter, Lester Holt on NBC in the middle of May was the last non-FOX interviewer to have a chance to speak with the president in that format. Is it because the president is trying to avoid all the thorny Russia-related questions? 

AVLON: It’s clearly a discomfort with transparency, and a constitutional discomfort with what the president might say. In that one interview with Lester Holt, he compounded all his problems, by undercutting his own administration’s argument that he had trotted out surrogates, including the vice president, to parrot, that the investigation had nothing to do with Comey and the Russia investigation, the firing of James Comey. So, I think there’s a question that the president is himself is an erratic messenger, that makes the staff nervous because he could undercut the positions, and the president doesn’t want the kind of typical transparency and grilling that comes in a society with a free press. That’s the bigger picture, that’s even more troubling.