I'm Isaac DeVere, Chief Washington Correspondent for Politico, and welcome to Off Message.

Today we've got John Carl, who's also the Chief Washington correspondent, but for ABC.

We talked to him in his office at the ABC Washington Bureau, just a couple blocks from the White House,

but where you're more likely to see him is in the front row of the White House briefing room.

And we talked about what it's like to cover a White House and why some of these questions about access and press coverage and getting the accurate facts matter,

not just to reporters and doing their jobs, but to everybody

out there in the country. We also talked about the differences between covering the Obama

White House and the Trump White House. I asked John what he thought the Trump White House compared

to, and the only thing he could come close to saying it was, was when he covered the 2000

campaign on the bus, the Strait

Talk Express with John McCain, told the story of being in the back of the bus one day,

talking to McCain and calling it in live to the hosts at CNN, where he was working then.

CNN put it on the air live, and other people who were working on the McCain campaign were at the front of

the bus watching CNN being filled in on what their candidate was doing because they were

seeing it on TV as it was happening. What is going on now, John says, is nothing really like that.

That's the closest he could come. He also talked about what it's like interacting with some of

these Trump aides off the record.

He didn't get into any of those off the record conversations.

But the difference that he sees in some of them when they talk about the war with the media

and the cameras are on and the microphones are on and then what they do when they're talking

to reporters when the cameras are off and the microphones are off.

So if you're a fan of season two, rate us, subscribe, and leave a written review on iTunes.

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