“Quite a brief daily briefing,” MSNBC's Katy Tur remarked at the conclusion. On Fox News, Jenna Lee told viewers that “this is something new. We're not used to an audio-only press briefing, and there'll be some news out of that, I'm sure.”

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I'm sure, too. We're witnessing a disappearing act by Sean Spicer.

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His on-camera briefing on Tuesday was his first in 15 days — which was largely understandable because he spent much of the previous two weeks traveling overseas with President Trump. But instead of allocating ample time, in recognition that many questions had piled up, he ended the session after just 30 minutes and left in a huff, following an exchange with reporters over “fake news.”

Spicer was generally inaccessible during Trump's foreign trip. One reporter explained the situation to Politico like this: “The most we've seen of Sean was at a rooftop bar in Jerusalem. But he refused to take work-related questions and said if you asked him a work-related question, then you had to take a shot.”

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A week before the trip, Trump tweeted that “maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future press briefings and hand out written responses” — a threat that appeared to be a response to journalists' complaints about false information that Spicer and deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had provided about the timeline of the president's decision to fire James B. Comey as FBI director.

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On the night that Trump terminated Comey, May 9, The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson described a peculiar scene:

After Spicer spent several minutes hidden in the darkness and among the bushes near these sets, Janet Montesi, an executive assistant in the press office, emerged and told reporters that Spicer would answer some questions, as long as he was not filmed doing so. Spicer then emerged. “Just turn the lights off. Turn the lights off,” he ordered. “We'll take care of this. ... Can you just turn that light off?”

Sanders filled in for Spicer at the next two press briefings. The White House attributed Spicer's absence to Navy reserve duty, but Spicer had been on duty the week before, and CNN reported that he actually was benched in favor of Sanders.

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Even before then, Spicer had cut way back on the length of briefings during the month of April, as I noted earlier this month.

Spicer still has his job, despite steady speculation that he could be replaced — perhaps by Fox News's Kimberly Guilfoyle. The next White House communications director, whoever Mike Dubke's successor might be, could have something to say about who should be the president's lead spokesman.