NBC News: White House purges transcripts of Trump's remarks from its website [View all]
NBC News - White House purges transcripts of Trump's remarks from its website
The White House told NBC News it has decided to post only videos. There still is one transcript remaining online, however: Trump's inaugural address.
May 21, 2025, 8:45 PM EDT / Updated May 22, 2025, 12:23 PM EDT
By Peter Nicholas, Megan Shannon and Megan Lebowitz
WASHINGTON The White House has removed official transcripts of President Donald Trumps public remarks from its government website, replacing them with selected videos of his public appearances.
As recently as Sunday, transcripts of Trumps speeches and comments were still showing up in the Remarks section of WhiteHouse.gov. The next day, they were gone, snapshots of the site from an internet archive show. The only transcript appearing now is of Trumps inaugural address on Jan. 20.
Government stenographers are still recording and transcribing Trumps remarks, a White House official said. But in an internal policy change in recent days, the White House took down the transcripts in favor of audio and video of his appearances.
The idea behind the move is that people will get a fuller and more accurate sense of Trump by watching and listening to him as opposed to reading a transcript, which they may not be inclined to do anyway, the official said. Purging the transcripts and switching to audio and video of Trump's remarks was intended to create "consistency" across the website, the official said.
In an effort to maintain consistency, previous transcripts that were available have been removed and replaced with the audio and visual components of that transcript, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The White House continues to work to upload the multitude of public engagements that the president has done and will continue to make sure that the website consists of a full and complete representation of the presidents public comments.
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