Gaggle

Hillary Clinton's 'gaggle gap'

By HADAS GOLD

The gaggle gap is back for Hillary Clinton.

According to Dan Merica, a campaign embed for CNN, it's been more than 70 days since Clinton held a press conference or gaggled with her traveling press. ABC's embed Liz Kreutz followed up, noting that the last time Clinton took questions from the traveling press was on Dec. 4 in Iowa.

The lack of questions from Clinton's traveling press has dogged the candidate since she launched her campaign. Over the summer, media organizations (including POLITICO) tracked how few questions she had answered. As Clinton moved on from the first phase of her campaign, that changed.

Clinton, to be clear, has sat down for many interviews over this 76 day period (on Thursday she was interviewed by CBS' Scott Pelley). And she has held many town halls, answering voter questions. In May, at the height of the drama over Clinton avoiding press conferences, spokesperson Jesse Ferguson posited "If a candidate answers hours of questions from real people on camera but they didn't come from press, did they happen?"

When asked about the lack of press conferences in late January, Clinton's traveling press secretary Nick Merrill pointed to the number of questions the candidate has answered from voters and interviewers.

"Since the beginning of December, she's done over 75 interviews for a total of more than 12 hours, including with those that travel with her, as recently as yesterday. She also took over 500 questions from the public in town halls last year, an ongoing conversation that ranged from how to raise wages to bullying to autism to her faith. That's a lot of time answering questions, and it's been an central part of this campaign," Merrill said.

We reached out to the campaign for an updated response and will update here accordingly.