President Donald Trump’s administration has scrubbed the White House website of almost every single transcript of the president’s official remarks.
As of this week, the only transcript still available on the site’s “Remarks” section is the transcript of Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20.
Some transcripts have been replaced by videos of Trump’s speeches and appearances, though dozens of events are completely unaccounted for, NBC News reported.
An unnamed official told NBC the move was part of an internal policy change to give people a fuller and more accurate sense of the president, and that switching to video created “consistency” across the website.
But presidential transcripts have long served as the definitive record of what a president says in public, leading historians and former White House officials to condemn the move.
Speaking to NBC, Mike McCurry, a press secretary in Bill Clinton’s White House, questioned whether the real motive was that Trump’s speeches often veer off into long-winded tangents that can read like incoherent babbling when written out.
Last month, during a talk at the Department of Justice, the president was complaining about liberals “playing the ref” with judges, the way former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight used to try to influence referees during college basketball games.
In between describing Knight’s coaching style and making the connection to the myriad legal challenges against his policies, a transcript generated by the transcription company Rev shows the president went on a nine-minute verbal ramble that covered Knight endorsing him, Afghanistan, Hamas, the price of eggs, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
The president calls his rhetorical style “the weave,” but McCurry told NBC that maybe the White House “didn’t want ‘the weave’ exposed.”
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told the outlet, “The president’s remarks are live on the website for every person in the world, including journalists, to access and watch for themselves. The Trump White House is the most transparent in history.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Besides the transcripts, though, the White House website is missing video records of at least two of Trump’s Oval Office meetings with world leaders—an April 14 sit down with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and a May 6 meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney—and more than half of Trump’s Q&As with the press, according to NBC.
During the meeting with Bukele, Trump said he wanted El Salvador to imprison as many criminals “as possible” at its CECOT mega prison, while Carney told Trump that Canada “won’t be for sale, ever.”
“Never say never,” Trump replied to Carney.
The Q&As covered major events including a school shooting at Florida State University, and the administration’s attempts to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status.
The transcripts aren’t just good for the public; they protect the president if he thinks he’s been misquoted because he can point to the official record, NBC said.
Beck Dorey-Stein, who was a White House stenographer for former President Barack Obama, and during the first few months of Trump’s first term, told the outlet that withholding the transcripts “seems really irresponsible and a self-inflicted wound.”
“With a transcript he can say, ‘This is exactly what I said,’” Dorey-Stein said.
Vice President JD Vance’s office has continued to post transcripts of his remarks. Reached by NBC, his office declined to comment.
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