Dan Pfeiffer

On the question of access right there.

You know, I was one of the people who was pretty critical of Biden, particularly the last couple of years for not doing enough communicating, not talking to enough people.

I've been of the view that Democrats that in this media age, politicians need to be communicating all the time.

That approach has benefited.

trump in a lot of ways it helped get him here so there's two questions on the self thing one is like as a member of the media what do you make of just the fact that we is it like is that uh put it put the specifics of trump's aside but like is it a good thing that people can just call the president at all times um and then like what do you see as the limits of this as a communication strategy

All of them on your show and our show.

But primarily your show and our show.

They can do the bulwark just after us.

Yeah, look, I mean every president does the access thing.

When we were – I mean when we worked for Obama.

We did tons of off-the-records and like – Yeah, we would bring in columnists off-the-record all the time to meet with Obama.

You'd bring in people – you do all the record stuff too.

But one of the ways you just – like you hope it shapes coverage.

And it's not just like grifting in terms of shaping coverage.

Like the idea of the off-the-record conversation is to have –

or the background conversation.

And we can dispute the journalistic ethics of participating in these things, but the argument from our side was you want people to understand why the president is doing certain things in ways in which he can't.

You're never going to ask him those questions in an interview, but if he explains the strategy or his general approach to politics, policy, et cetera, you're at least interpreting the things you see him saying and doing

through the framework of what we're doing.

Like David Plouffe and I, when we were in the White House, we used to do a, I think it was a weekly meeting, you know, deep background meeting with the White House press that we would try to try and explain.