The White House reporter who lit into Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her "inflammatory" remarks about the press said Wednesday that President Donald Trump runs his administration like the "mob."
Brian Karem, a Playboy correspondent and editor of the Sentinel newspapers, was asked by WUSA's Bruce Johnson on Wednesday about the scaling back of on-air press briefings by the White House.
"They want less, not more," Johnson said.
"Yeah, I understand that, and they're wrong," Karem said. "They need to have more. We have questions about policy that have not been answered, and there have been a lot of things done in this administration that need answers, and they are avoiding answering substantive questions."
"Do you get the impression that this president is trying to run the White House, the administration like a business, as opposed to the top government job that it is?" Johnson asked. "What's your impression?"
"No," Karem said. "I get the feeling that this president is trying to run it as if it's a family business, like the mob, but not necessarily a CEO of a business. It's my way or the highway. It's demagoguery, and I feel bad for the people that I respect in the administration."
Karem came to prominence among the rest of the media after his testy exchange Tuesday with Sanders, scoring appearances on CNN and MSNBC, in addition to writing a widely promoted column about how he did not like "bullies."
While Sanders, the White House deputy press secretary, was in the midst of berating the press Tuesday over "fake news," Karem cut in loudly to say Sanders was "inflaming everybody with her rhetoric." Sanders responded that it was "outrageous" to be accused of doing that when she was trying to answer a question.
Vox referred to him as a "heroic Playboy reporter."
Trump has consistently railed against mainstream press outlets as "fake news," ramping up his rhetoric in recent weeks.