CNN commentator Scott Jennings, mocked as “job hungry” in his pursuit of a White House post while President Donald Trump bans members of the press, repeatedly sidestepped questions about the ban during a Monday night appearance on the network that pays him.

Jennings is considered the frontrunner for the press secretary job, as The Guardian has reported. The president has spent weeks asking friends what they think of Jennings and whether he would be a good choice. It has been almost a month since Karoline Leavitt’s last day at the White House, and neither Jennings nor anyone else has been brought in to replace her. The press secretary is the administration’s chief public-facing liaison to the press corps, handling briefings and overseeing journalists’ access to the president — a role directly entangled in the current dispute over press access.

Trump’s decision to bar members of the press prompted a full boycott from other outlets in solidarity. The end result: the president lost live media coverage of his press events.

The Daily Beast flagged the moment CNN Monday night, when guest host Sara Sidner confronted Jennings directly. “Scott, I don’t know if you know this, but your name is up for running for the next press secretary,” she said. (Video of the exchange via Facebook.)

Jennings, who has been fighting for the job, responded with a single syllable: “Hmmm.”

Sidner then asked whether he stood with the president over the ban or with the network that pays him. Jennings dodged: “I think he’s unlikely to prevail in court.”

“It seems to me the net result of this has been — he has less reach,” Jennings said. “And his message is not going to get out as much. If this sort of becomes the way it is, he will be seen and heard by fewer people — which I think is actually a net negative, since he’s his own best spokesperson and his own best press secretary.”

He added that he believes Trump “sparring” with reporters “works to his advantage. And so if you take them out, you lose that a little bit.”

“I’m not a lawyer... but based on what I’ve heard, it’s unlikely to stick. And it might be a little self-defeating if you consider that you want the president to be heard and seen more, like I do... This seems to be working against that,” Jennings said.

Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin pressed him into a corner: “If you’re press secretary, you’re not going to do that. Is that what you’re pledging here right now?”

Jennings refused to commit to anything. “I’m not answering that.”

Jennings went on to suggest that CNN was not all that bad, drawing what he portrayed as a clear line between CNN, Politico and MS NOW — which he said is like an “alternate reality.”

“Well, some people might say that about Fox,” Sidner replied.

“Yeah, [Barack] Obama. He said that about Fox,” Jennings said.

Pressed again on whether he considered his own employer a “fake news” network, as Trump has alleged, Jennings said: “I sometimes strongly disagree with the framing... But no, I think we need to cover the news here, and I think we still can cover the news. But I consider this to be a news outlet. I consider Politico to be a news outlet. MS [NOW] is a different story in my.”

Rogin chimed in: “If the president’s lost Fox News, that’s probably not a good sign, you know?” He added that the result of Trump’s ban had been nothing but bad for the White House, arguing the president had “actually ensured” tougher coverage as a consequence. Rogin wondered whether Trump simply could not take it emotionally.

“He doesn’t want to hear it,” Rogin suggested. “He doesn’t really care if you report bad things about him, he doesn’t want them to be in his face. He doesn’t want it at his desk, in his room, in his office. He’s built a cocoon around himself, where nobody ever tells him no, where his reality is just agreed to, whether it matches the reality of the rest of us are living in.”

“That has its own danger, because we have a leader of the free world who is eliminating all of the feedback channels that might tell him that, hey, American people really don’t like the Iran war, hey, the American people really do care about the Epstein files, the American people really don’t think the economy is good,” Rogin said.

Feedback of that kind pierces the bubble of Trump’s chosen reality — something Rogin called “really important.” “That actually took a hit today,” he said.

The president’s troubles extended to Newsmax, the pro-Trump network, where he was humiliated after it became clear that the professional press pool brings all of the equipment needed to capture high-definition video and audio of anything the president says. Press pools — small groups of journalists who cover the president on behalf of the wider press corps — carry professional-grade broadcast equipment precisely so that his remarks are captured and shared no matter which outlets are in the room. Trump was mocked mercilessly online for a press event in which no one knew what he was saying, resulting in sparse coverage.

The banned outlets filed a lawsuit on Monday and asked for a temporary restraining order to restore their passes while the case works its way through the courts. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday — the first courtroom test of that request.

Source: Alternet