U.S. President Barack Obama is holding his final news conference as the American leader on Wednesday, sure to face questions about incoming President-elect Donald Trump as well as his surprise commutation of the prison sentence for an Army intelligence analyst who leaked military documents.
Obama leaves office Friday after eight years in the White House, with Trump taking over when he is sworn in as the country’s 45th president at noon on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Obama, a Democrat, adamantly fought against the Republican Trump in the presidential campaign, calling the billionaire real estate mogul turned politician temperamentally unfit to serve as the U.S. commander in chief. But since the election, Obama has met with Trump and talked to him on several occasions as they worked toward a peaceful transition in power.
But even as the Trump presidency nears, tensions remain between the two leaders, especially since Trump has vowed to overturn many of Obama’s executive actions and win congressional approval to repeal his signature health care reforms.
FILE – Members of the White House press corps scramble to the news that U.S. President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan.
White House press corp move
White House press secretary Josh Earnest says Obama plans in part to use his final news conference to voice his concerns about suggestions from Trump aides that they might move the White House press corps out of the West Wing, where they are close to the president’s Oval Office, to another location in the White House complex, which the Trump officials say would allow more reporters to attend daily news conferences.
Trump has feuded with the news media throughout his presidential campaign and transition to power, claiming it produces “fake news” about him, and regularly disparages specific news outlets, including NBC News in a Twitter comment Wednesday, and occasionally individual reporters by name.
“The media environment is challenging and the news media and the journalists who cover the White House will be challenged to rise to the occasion and adapt to the changing environment,” Earnest told Politico ahead of Obama’s news conference. “I know the president is interested in showing his support for their efforts to do that.”
At his own final briefing Tuesday, Earnest said the presence of news media working in close proximity to the American leader and key government officials in the White House, and holding them accountable, is a “uniquely American feature of our democracy.”
FILE – Chelsea Manning
Presidential pardons
As his second presidential term ends, Obama on Tuesday commuted the 35-year sentence of Army Private Chelsea Manning, who leaked hundreds of thousands of military documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. When she is released in May, she will have served about seven years behind bars.
Manning’s supporters claimed her lengthy sentence was far out of proportion to those received by others in national-security-related cases, but Republicans sharply attacked Obama for the commutation, saying Manning’s actions made her a traitor, not a martyr for free access to confidential documents.
Obama also pardoned Marine General James Cartwright, a one-time vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had recently pleaded guilty to a felony charge for lying about his disclosure of confidential information to reporters at The New York Times and Newsweek. Less controversially, Obama also cut lengthy prison terms for more than 200 drug offenders.
Demonstrators make their way around downtown, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikilea
Russian hack
Reporters are also likely to ask Obama about the U.S. intelligence conclusion that Russia meddled in the presidential election campaign in an effort to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state looking to become the first female U.S. president, and to reflect on his time as the American president.
Obama, at 55, is younger than many U.S. presidents as they leave office.
He has been somewhat vague about his post-presidency plans, although it likely includes writing a memoir and political attempts to help Democrats win more elections at the state level to eventually regain political clout in Washington, where Republicans now control both houses of Congress and in two days the White House. Obama also can be counted on to play frequent rounds of golf, his favorite past-time.
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