There Is No White House Press Secretary
Trump will eventually appoint someone to replace Sarah Sanders. But the office has been functionally obliterated.
It may now seem quaint, but there was a time in recent history when White House press secretaries played a dual role: protecting the president’s image and advocating for the interests of a free press. The very layout of the West Wing suggests that’s the way it’s supposed to be. When they leave their office through the back door, press secretaries stand in a hallway equidistant from the Oval Office and the press-briefing room.
The geography symbolizes the balancing act a good press secretary must perform, says Mike McCurry, who held the job under former President Bill Clinton. “The press secretary has the job, internally, of being a whisperer for the White House press corps,” he told me. “Someone inside needs to defend the interests of a
