Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House intelligence committee, has spent more than 14 hours on air since President Trump took office, according to a White House tracking report.
The report found that Schiff has been on television for 14 hours, eight minutes and 55 seconds, according to a summary by the Washington Free Beacon. That’s a whopping 848 minutes of air time — or an average of more than four minutes every single day since Trump took office.
Many of those interviews are on the House intelligence committee’s probe into Russian election interference and allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
On Monday, Trump tweeted, “Sleazy Adam Schiff, the totally biased Congressman looking into “Russia,” spends all of his time on television pushing the Dem loss excuse!”
The vast majority of his interviews have been on cable networks CNN and MSNBC, although the report notes he has also done Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Comedy Central, and HBO.
Meanwhile, his Republican counterpart was forced to temporarily recuse himself from the Russian investigation in April, after progressive groups filed a complaint with a congressional ethics committee alleging that he discussed classified details of the probe with media.
Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch has alleged, to no avail, that Schiff has done the same thing.
Schiff attacked the president on Twitter, saying he watched too much TV.
“With respect Mr. President, the problem is how often you watch TV, and that your comments and actions are beneath the dignity of the office,” he tweeted.
The White House tracking report also found that the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), had done 60 interviews totaling five hours, 55 minutes, and 13 seconds of interviews since Trump took office, or 355 minutes on air.
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel told the Washington Free Beacon that their appearances were mostly about trying to “build their own brand.”
“Democrats are tripping over themselves to see who can get the most TV time to talk about the Russia investigation,” she said in a statement to the news outlet. “It is shocking that Rep. Schiff and Sen. Warner have combined for more than 180 interviews and over 20 hours of TV time since inauguration day.”
“More often than not, these interviews seem to be more of an effort to build their own brand and push their own partisan agenda than to provide a substantive update on the investigative process,” she said.
“Instead of rushing to the TV cameras every day, we encourage these Democrats to get to work and bring this investigation to a close so we can get back to focusing on issues that matter to the American people.”