Hillary Clinton 'Will Hold Press Conferences' as President, Press Secretary Vows

Brian Fallon joined this week's "Powerhouse Politics" podcast.

ByABC News
September 2, 2016, 4:14 PM

— -- It’s been 272 days since Hillary Clinton’s last press conference. But Clinton’s lead press secretary, Brian Fallon, vowed that if elected, “Hillary Clinton will hold press conferences.”

“But the frequency of them is something that would just play out as time went on,” he added.

On this week’s “Powerhouse Politics” podcast, Fallon promised greater interaction between Clinton and the press on the campaign trail and said he expects the Democratic nominee to hold a press conference soon.

“The amount of interaction can only go up," he said, noting that the traveling press will soon be flying with Clinton on her new campaign plane.

“I’m sure that will bring with it a lot of opportunities for additional access to the candidate and interactions between her and the traveling press corps that covers her every day,” Fallon told ABC News’ chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, and political director Rick Klein on the podcast.

“We are very respectful of the press and the job that they have to do,” Fallon continued. “We have done a lot of interviews, but I know that no matter how many questions we answer in a variety of formats, it is the press’s job to always demand more access. We respect that, and so we’re going to seek further ways to accommodate that in the remaining months of the campaign.”

He later expressed confidence that the larger plane will yield greater face time between Clinton and the traveling press, saying, “She will interact with them to a good extent when we’re traveling with them on the same plane.”

He pointed to a variety of local media and national television interviews, as well as press gaggles on the road “from time to time,” as evidence of Clinton’s availability to the press and outreach to voters in battleground states.

Before that can happen, Clinton faces tightening poll numbers with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as the November election approaches.

“It is inevitable that the race will even further tighten than what we’ve seen in the last couple weeks. There was no doubt that coming out of the convention, we had a pretty significant bounce,” Fallon said. “We always perceived that the race would tighten around Labor Day because once Donald Trump stopped committing unforced errors, he could probably get a little bit closer to consolidating the Republicans that defected from him, again, after he went after the Khan family and that would naturally mean that the race would tighten a bit.”

He said the Clinton campaign has not yet been contacted by Henry Kissinger or George Shultz, despite recent reports that the Republican former secretaries of state are considering a joint endorsement of Clinton.

“I don’t know what the basis is. We have not heard from Mr. Shultz or from Mr. Kissinger on this, nor have we sought their endorsement,” said Fallon. But he said the rumored endorsement is “testimony to the degree to which Republicans are fleeing the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency.”

ABC News reporter Ali Rogin, fresh off the campaign trail in Arizona, also joined the “Powerhouse Politics” podcast to discuss Trump’s recent immigration speech in the state, as well as Sen. John McCain’s primary race victory this week.

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