Lachlan Markay

President Barack Obama did not release the names of every visitor to his White House, so President Donald Trump will not release any at all. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that President Donald Trump’s predecessor “scrubbed” the logs of names they did not want to be made public, and therefore that there was no reason to release any list of visitor names. Publicly posted Obama White House logs were indeed missing the names of thousands of visitors, including a number of lobbyists and campaign donors. But they did include the names of tens of thousands of guests in entries that informed a number of critical stories about the administration, including some by the most vocal Trump supporters in media. “This is the policy that’s existed from the beginning of time since [logs] were kept through the last [administration], and that last one was a faux attempt,” Spicer said. “They would scrub whoever they didn’t want to put out.” Spicer told reporters that Americans have a right to make their voice heard at the White House without their identities, or the names of officials hearing their concerns, being publicly listed. “We recognized that there’s a privacy aspect to allowing citizens to come and express their views,” Spicer said. “There’s an opportunity for the American people who want to have a conversation and be able to share their view” to do so without being publicly identified.