“You cannot have a president that describes them as the enemy,” Mike McCurry, speaking alongside Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said. | Larry French/Getty Images Clinton press secretary spars with Sanders over Trump media criticism

Former Bill Clinton spokesman Michael McCurry urged White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to reconsider the Trump administration’s critical stance toward the press on Tuesday, stressing that reporters “are not the enemy of the people.”

“Your president has got to change the way he talks about the media — he has to,” McCurry said to Sanders during a panel on the relationship between the presidency, the public and the press hosted by the White House Correspondents' Association and the White House Transition Project.


Sanders and McCurry, who served as press secretary under Clinton from 1994 to 1998, found common ground in bemoaning that media outlets often eschewed substance and policy for scandal and palace intrigue.

But the two White House spokespeople broke in their views of Trump’s frequent verbal attacks on the press.

“You cannot have a president that describes them as the enemy,” McCurry, speaking alongside Sanders, said.

Sanders pushed back, arguing that respect between the commander and chief and those who seek to hold him accountable is “a two-way street.”

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“The idea that this is — you’re going to lay the blame at the feet of the president I find far-fetched,” Sanders said.

The Trump spokeswoman also downplayed the notion that the president’s media criticisms were tantamount to warfare — an assertion the former Clinton aide disputed.

"We have not declared war on the press,” she said.

“Yes, you did,” McCurry replied.

Sanders and McCurry found themselves in agreement in lamenting the effect televising the daily White House press briefing has had in the substance of the questions asked.

“Now it’s theater … not a briefing,” McCurry said. “What we need is more transparency.”

“I do agree that I think a lot of times the theatrics of it take away from the news component,” Sanders concurred.

Sanders charged that the “amount of substance was much higher” last year when the White House opted to temporarily halt on-camera briefings, though she stressed she was not advocating for a return to off-camera podium outings.

Sanders returned to the press podium on Tuesday after a week’s absence. The lack of press briefings, despite a flurry of political activity inside and outside Washington led reporters to vent their frustrations on social media and-on-air.

The dearth of a question and answer session with reporters came as the White House faced questions over their response to the Robert Porter domestic violence scandal, the mass shooting at Florida high school, allegations of infidelity against the president and new indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling.

“Memo to the White House, you cannot avoid us. Stop trying to dodge us,” CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin said Tuesday as the press briefing was delayed over an hour after the week-long absence.

Shortly after the two officials concluded their discussion, Trump took to social media to taunt cable news networks over their viewership.

“Bad ratings @CNN & @MSNBC got scammed when they covered the anti-Trump Russia rally wall-to-wall,” Trump tweeted. “They probably knew it was Fake News but, because it was a rally against me, they pushed it hard anyway. Two really dishonest newscasters, but the public is wise!”