NY Times reporter admits: Trump is more open with the media than Obama was

A New York Times reporter admitted Monday at least two things that President Donald Trump is better at than his predecessor, former President Barack Obama — and they have to do with the media.

Despite constantly railing against the mainstream media, fake news and more often than not the Times itself, Trump is better at news conferences and reaching out to individual reporters even in organizations that he dislikes, said Glenn Thrush, a White House reporter for the Times.

Thrush’s comments came Monday during a panel discussion with two other reporters on “A Front Row Seat to Spin."

"I do want to give Trump credit on things, " Thrush said. "I think one of the things that I think he's doing better than Barack Obama are these press conferences and his outreach to individual reporters, even for organizations, like my own, that he criticizes."

Thrush explained the media has fallen into a “trap” of depicting the Obama administration of being some “golden era” for press freedom. But when Obama held a news  conference, he only answered prescreened questions from news outlets that favored him, Thrush said.

"When Obama had press conferences, he had a single piece of white paper and he had six or seven organizations that he had preselected to call upon, and a lot of them were pretty favorable to him, too,” he explained.

But because Trump holds “free-ranging” press conferences, typically calling on reporters without preselecting them, Thrush said the Republican president’s meetings with the media are a lot more “democratic” than under Obama.

Indeed, while nearly every news conference under Obama happened without spectacle, Trump’s have been a bit more contentious. Trump has no problem calling on reporters who either work for an outlet he dislikes or who he personally dislikes. For example, Trump has famously sparred with CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta several times, though still answering Acosta’s questions, despite labeling his outlet “very fake news."

Listen to Thrush's comments below:

(H/T: Free Beacon)