Here are a bunch of ways Hillary Clinton has avoided talking to journalists

(Image credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

published 3 September 2016

Hillary Clinton's campaign announced Thursday their candidate would begin flying on a larger plane with room for media to tag along starting on Labor Day. That's newsworthy because it has been nine months since Clinton held a press conference, and what interactions she does have with the media are notoriously well-controlled by her staff.

In New Hampshire last year, Clinton's aides actually used a rope to hold reporters away from her, an experience that is more the rule than the exception. In that vein, Politico has compiled a fascinating list of other times the campaign made covering Clinton "like a sensory deprivation experience" for print pool journalists. Here are a few of the most bizarre anecdotes:

Drowned Out By a Jet Engine, Aug. 31: Clinton’s plane landed in Cincinnati, from East Hampton, ahead of her speech to the American Legion. On the tarmac, Clinton was greeted by a group of county Democratic party chairs. But, "your pooler was not close enough to hear any conversations over the noise of the plane."They Paved Paradise and Put up a Parking Lot, Aug. 30: Clinton hit up three big fundraisers in the Hamptons. ... Pool reporters were stationed about 400 yards away from the house, "among the parked cars."Chocolates > Questions, Aug. 25: Clinton popped into Hub Coffee Roasters after a rally in Reno. There, she ignored questions about Donald Trump lobbed at her from the reporters in the coffee shop. Instead, she encouraged them to sample Dorinda’s Chocolates. "It's really good!" she said.Magic Johnson’s Driveway, Aug. 22: After a fundraiser at Magic Johnson’s house, pool "was able to see Magic wave goodbye to HRC from the driveway." [Politico]

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.