CNN's Jim Acosta, a stalwart reporter, kind of lost his cool today after the Trump administration held an off-camera, no-audio press gaggle and refused to give substantive answers to his questions.
"That's the White House behind me. The White House," Acosta told CNN's Brooke Baldwin. "And it's just — it's bizarre, I don't know what world we're living in right now, Brooke, where we're standing at the White House ... and they bring us into the briefing room here at the White House, and they won't answer these questions on camera or let us record the audio. I don't know why everybody is going along with this."
Reporters from several outlets took to Twitter to point out how much time the Trump press team has spent off camera so far this month. In fact, they've only held four on-camera briefings in June.
A press secretary having an off-camera, on-the-record meeting with reporters isn't all that uncommon. But it typically happens while a president is on the road, not in the West Wing.
And it's just the latest odd behavior to come out of the Trump press shop.
In February, the White House caught flak for excluding a bunch of news outlets from an off-camera gaggle. CNN, The New York Times, Politico, The Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and BBC all said they were left out.
And in late May, the White House told reporters at an audio-only gaggle that they weren't allowed to air the audio live.
The squabble Monday comes amid reports that Press Secretary Sean Spicer might move to a new West Wing job, which will take him out of the camera's eye and into a more managerial role. It's unclear when that might happen or who would replace him.
