For the second day in a row, the White House has called a “lid” on press activities, this time a “travel/photo lid.” If the phrase doesn’t sound familiar to you, maybe you weren’t a fan of the show The West Wing, which made insider terms like that a little more accessible for the rest of us.
Basically, a lid is the White House saying “there will be no more news for you today, you can all go home now.”
A travel lid is the White House telling you that Donald Trump will not be appearing in public today, so you won’t get to ask him any questions, so you can all go home now.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you or I could publicly admit to a crime that, let’s face it, will eventually be called treason by more people than “the extreme left,” and then the next day just tell everyone that you don’t really want to talk about it?
That’s exactly what Trump is doing.
It was Trump’s biggest tweet yesterday: He casually overturned months of meticulous lying crafted to make his followers, the general public, and the press believe that he had no knowledge of a meeting in his own building between his own son, his own son-in-law, his own campaign manager, and a bevy of Russian agents lobbying the future administration for sanctions relief in exchange for damaging information on his political opponent.
He went from “NO COLLUSION” to “collusion is not a crime” in approximately zero seconds flat after finding out that his former communications director had been honest with the Special Counsel in her testimony, and likely told chief prosecutor Robert Mueller everything she knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
But as easy as that, the biggest news that the White House press corps gets to report is:
JUST IN: White House announces a travel/photo lid, which means no public appearances by Trump today as new questions swirl around that 2016 Trump Tower meeting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.
— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) August 6, 2018
Must be awfully nice.
Featured image via screen capture
