Dem VP Candidate Tim Kaine Defends Hillary Clinton's Questionable Media Availability
“Hillary takes questions from reporters every day," Tim Kaine said. "She does."
— -- As the days drag on since Hillary Clinton’s most recent formal news conference, the candidate and her aides have struggled to explain why she refuses to hold one.
The latest attempt came Thursday, when Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, was asked in an interview with CBS News about the Democratic presidential nominee’s limited interactions with the media.
“Hillary takes questions from reporters every day. She does,” Kaine said. “She talks to the press everywhere she goes.”
This depiction, however, is largely inaccurate.
Clinton has stopped to take questions from her traveling press corps only a handful of times this year. The occasions are always unannounced, there is no microphone, there are a limited number of reporters, and they never last more than 10 minutes. (Trump, on the flip side, has conducted numerous wide-ranging news conferences that are announced in advance.)
More often than not, she simply ignores questions from the traveling press, even when they come face to face.
At a recent campaign stop in Reno, Nevada, for instance, a group of reporters repeatedly tried to ask her questions during a visit to a coffee shop. But Clinton, who had just been presented with a platter of chocolates, wouldn’t answer.
“Oh, my gosh. This is really good. It really is,” she said, after biting into a salted caramel truffle. “I want you to offer it all to the press. They are so wonderful, so cooperative, so hardworking, they all deserve a piece of chocolate.”
As reporters attempted again to throw out a question, she interjected again, saying, “No, no, no, you’ll love this. So good. Everybody try one.”
It has been 271 days since Clinton last held a formal news conference, on Dec. 4.
It is true that she has held several interviews with local and national reporters, including this one. The practice of choosing one-on-one interviews instead of news conferences, however, allows the campaign more control over the message: It gets to choose who interviews Clinton and when.
Asked during a recent phone interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about when she will hold a news conference, Clinton immediately quipped, “Well, Anderson, I’m talking to you right now.”
For Kaine’s part, he has gathered informally to take questions from his press corps four times since becoming the vice presidential nominee in late July. He does local interviews routinely but often ignores questions from the traveling press when approached on the rope line at events.
ABC News’ Josh Haskell and Jessica Hopper contributed to this report.
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