The daily briefing is a way for the White House to communicate to the public via the news media. That the White House couldn’t get its story (or stories) straight about something as important as the firing of the F.B.I. director, during an investigation into ties between the president’s campaign and a foreign power reportedly trying to sway a United States presidential election, once again breaks the mold of what’s “normal” in United States governance.

Yes, we’re in a time of deep partisan divide, and that includes, very centrally, the news media. A Pew research report this week showed that 89 percent of Democrats say that the news media plays an important watchdog role with top government leaders while only about 42 percent of Republicans say the same.

That divide should never extend to the reliability of information put forth by the United States government. But the seeds of this week’s informational disarray have been there since the start: The very first words to come from the White House briefing room under this administration — over the size of the inauguration crowd — were false. This time the subject was far more important.

On Friday morning, President Trump appeared to defend his press team, and his own credibility, with a lowering of the bar for accuracy. “As a very active President with lots of things happening,” he wrote amid his stream of Twitter posts, “it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!”

It was an acknowledgment that he would not expect or demand precision from the people he puts forward to represent not only him, but also the country he leads. He has given his press team a “say anything” hall pass.