Eliza Collins

USA TODAY

On Monday afternoon, a lectern with “Trump” written in gold letters was wheeled upstairs inside Trump Tower.

That little wooden box sent reporters into a frenzy. Could it be that Donald Trump would finally face the press after more than four months without a news conference?

To be clear, it isn’t that Trump hasn’t spoken to members of the media since July — he has. However, his interviews are on his terms with a single reporter or, in what may be closest to a news conference, a single on-the-record meeting with The New York Times reporters and editors.

A news conference forces Trump away from leading the narrative — he released his presidential priorities via video — and holds him accountable to a wide range of questions from different reporters and outlets.

The Democratic National Committee pointed out the number of days Trump has gone without a news conference in an email to reporters Monday with the subject line “When was Trump’s last press conference?”

“It has been 124 days since Donald Trump held a press conference,” the email body read. It’s something of a role reversal after the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went more than 9 months without a formal news conference during the campaign.

Clinton’s relative inaccessibility spawned something the Trump campaign called the “Hiding Hillary Watch” with a running tally of the number of days since her last news conference.

Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a question about when Trump plans to have a news conference.