'He needs to let his experts speak': Haley offers Trump messaging advice amid pandemic
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley suggested Friday that President Donald Trump should "let his experts speak" at the White House's daily coronavirus briefings and make sure the nightly news conferences, which often stretch close to two hours, are not "too long."
The remarks from the former ambassador to the U.N. come amid a growing chorus of criticism from the president's detractors, as well as some traditional White House defenders, that the sprawling televised sessions are not succinct and needlessly feature Trump clashing with reporters amid an unprecedented public health crisis.
In an interview Thursday morning on "Fox & Friends," Haley praised the president's willingness to "over-communicate" and ability to "show vision of what it is going to look like on the other side" of the deadly outbreak, saying Trump "is good to show up every day and let people know he is on it."
"But I also think he needs to let his experts speak. Let them talk about it," she continued. "I think he should go and set the tone. I think he should let them put out the data. I think they should answer any questions that the press has. And then they should leave. I don't think they need to be too long. I don't think he needs to feel like he needs to answer everything."
Haley also encouraged Trump to present more detailed financial data at the briefings as the administration readies to reopen the U.S. economy. "I think what would be really good is for him to have a health report, but also have an economic report at the same time. Now we're going to start to see both of those at the same time," she said.
Haley's recommendations for the White House's messaging are notable given her own political prospects; she is positioned as one of Vice President Mike Pence's chief rivals to inherit the reins of the Republican Party after Trump leaves office.
But the former diplomat and South Carolina governor is not the first high-profile Republican to encourage the president to curb his behavior at the briefings. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) acknowledged Trump "sometimes drowns out his own message," and Sen. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) said he should "let the health professionals guide where we're going to go," The New York Times reported Thursday
Even the conservative-leaning editorial board of The Wall Street Journal panned "Trump's Wasted Briefings," writing Wednesday that the president's "outbursts against his political critics are ... notably off key at this moment. This isn't impeachment, and Covid-19 isn't shifty Schiff. It's a once-a-century threat to American life and livelihood."
In response, Trump tweeted that the Journal "always 'forgets' to mention that the ratings for the White House Press Briefings are 'through the roof,'" and concluded: "WSJ is Fake News!"
