During the regular White House press briefing the following day, the atmosphere was very casual - something which used to be unusual for one of this administration's briefings. The atmosphere used to be very combative and adversarial, and harkened back to the White House briefings of the late 2010s. At least the press weren't being called the Enemy of the People this time, or Fake News or any similar rhetoric.

The adversarial nature of the briefings were mostly because of the shenanigans of the VP, and the administration having to cover up for him or having to issue denials. The press had been growing more and more frustrated by the White House press secretary's non-answer answers or demonstrable, out-and-out lies regarding the VP. In fact, it got so bad that the press secretary was forced to resign. That meant Jamie Summers, the best person in the Office of the Press Secretary to take over despite being only twenty-six, was promoted.

Her style was refreshingly different from her predecessor, to say the least. From the beginning, the White House Press Corps found that the new press secretary had a problem dissembling, and though she tried to answer everyone's questions, inevitably there would be some she couldn't, and during those times, she'd just answer the question with a standard "I have no information," or just move on to another topic altogether.

The press corps learned this very quickly, and picked up on a winning strategy of extracting information: they would take what Jamie said at face value, and for those that she didn't want to speak about, this was considered as good as a confirmation (or a denial, depending on how the question was phrased and responded to).

This, of course, damaged Jamie's reputation early on. In one of her regular Skype calls with Kat, she told her best friend about it.

Kat then told her big sister, "Effie,” and Effie gave Jamie some advice, which the neophyte press secretary followed.

Prior to her transition, Freja Martina Olofsdotter Xander used to be Frei Martin Olofsdotter Xander. When she changed her name, she went for the closest female version of her birth-name, in deference to her parents, and to stem any accusations of her trying to confuse or hide who she formally was - as a lawyer, a government official and an ex-military officer, this was more important than it normally would have been.

As to the unusual-ness of the name itself, it was because she was a first-generation Danish-American (as was her sister, of course) - both of her parents were naturalized Americans who had legally immigrated from Denmark as teenagers (her father was from Copenhagen while her mother was from the town of Helsingor, the home of historical Kronborg Castle, which Shakespeare used as the basis for the castle in his play, Hamlet).

And, because of the Scandinavian practice of women using the mother's maiden surname as their middle name and taking the husband's family name when they got married, and then passing it on to their offspring, Effie and Kat inherited the middle name "Olofsdotter" from their mother Felicia, and the family name "Xander" from their father, Sigmund.

"Olofsdotter" was an old, storied and very common Scandinavian family name, which literally meant "Olaf's Daughter," while her father's family name, though not as storied and common, had an equally cool meaning - "Xander" meant "Defender of Men," which implied they were descended from warrior Vikings.

The only concession of their parents, insofar as American naming conventions went, was in giving her and her sister second names - Martin for her (or him at the time) and Theodora for her sister, Kat.

Her original, male, given name was a very traditional Scandinavian name - "Frei" meant "man of choice." Her new female name, "Freja," though it sounded similar, meant something altogether different - "queen of beauty" (it was actually the name of a legendary Norse goddess who was known for her beauty). And much was made of that in the press. Freja Martina, or Effie to her friends, was a very, very attractive redheaded beauty, whereas the old Frei Martin, or Marty to his friends, was just a skinny, lanky carrot-top.

- - - - -

Following Effie's advice, Jamie bided her time, and waited for when there was a perfect storm of breaking news items.

Upon such a day, Jamie masterfully leaked to the press (via channels which were totally untraceable to her or to the White House) several pieces of news, leaking them piecemeal so that she could stretch them to cover the entire week. There was one common thing about them, however, - they were all incomplete pieces of news.

On that Monday, the press got wind of a news item that said the president's daughter was pregnant and was due to give birth soon. They brought it up during the daily press briefing. Jamie didn't add more information, nor even acknowledge the item. Which, to the press, was as good as a confirmation. So even the major news outlets had articles that said things like, "the White House's non-denial denial indicates that..." or that the news item was "confirmed by the White House.” The president was livid but Lindsay explained the basis for this rumor to her father, and he just had to laugh. Jamie said she had a plan, and the President and Lindsay agreed to sit on it for now, though they reserved the right to file libel cases later.

The following day, the press corps heard that massive tariffs were going to be applied to Chinese fish exports that will cause a massive shift in global fish prices for the next ten years. They asked Jamie, but she declined to comment. So they printed the stories they liked and, though market figures remained unchanged, it was only a matter of time, the said.

And then, the day after that, they got wind of the development of a new videogame that will be the next new thing coming from Silicon Valley. That was actually fine, but the reporters' beef was more about why was the government getting involved with something as pidley as a videogame.

And then, the day after that, there was the big one - they got wind of rumors of the imminent shutdown of several large American manufacturing companies due to a lack of support from the government.

Jamie said that she had no information about it for them, and kept her expression stonily blank.

Of course, the press had a field day with this, and printed the little that they knew - that several US companies would be shutting down because of the lack of government financial support or aid. They also did the same thing they did with the rest of the items they heard about that week, and said that the White House confirmed it. This, of course, caused national panic but since it was already after the close of the stock markets, there was no reaction from business yet.

The following day, Jamie scheduled an early morning press briefing, even before the stock markets opened, and the White House Press Corps was chomping at the bit. This was going to be something juicy, the reporters thought. Which it was, but not in the way they thought it would be.

They arrived at the White House press room in dribs and drabs, as usual. But they were surprised to see Jamie already there ahead of them, standing at her podium. And quite angry, judging by her expression. She wasn't talking to anyone.

At the appointed hour, Jamie started the briefing.

"Good morning," she began, and without the customary smile, preambles and small talk, she got into it right away.

"I'd like to direct your attention to a new person among your ranks - that is Mr. Jonathan Smith from the Voice of America." She pointed to an African-American at the front row. "He is here upon my invitation, to provide verbatim reporting on today's briefing.

"Also, I bring your attention to our friends from C-SPAN. I have asked them to begin their coverage ten minutes before we began the briefing, and to extend the coverage to ten minutes after, in a continuous non-breaking manner. They have two cameras here now instead of the customary one.

"I am not curtailing your coverage at all. However, I am making sure that everything is captured from beginning to end. A running time-stamp will be in the corner of the C-SPAN video so any editing of their coverage will be noticed."

There was a slow murmuring spreading in their ranks, wondering what was happening, but Jamie wasn't having any of it, and rapped her hand on the podium to get the their attention.

"At the beginning of my tenure," she said in a vaguely angry tone, "I made a pledge to you, and the nation, that I will be not dissemble or lie, that all that you will hear from me will be the truth, as I know it to be.

"But many among you have taken advantage of my pledge.

"Naturally, I am unable to give you answers to all your questions, but it seems that many of you use my not denying nor averring your questions to make your own conclusions. Far be it for me to tell you how to write your pieces. Who am I to tell you veterans how to do your job? But you take a risk every time you do that." She sighed and sadly shook her head.

"All right," she said. "Let's get to the news items of the day.

"First item. The Uruguay government contacted the White House last week, asking for assistance. It seems many members of the Uruguay State Industries group, or US Industries, face imminent shutdown of their factories. The Uruguay government has not provided them any assistance or subsidies for several years now, owing to their current financial difficulties, and because of it, these businesses are failing.

"President Walsh is therefore allotting a significant portion of the government's discretionary foreign aid budget to the Uruguay State Industries, or 'US Industries.' This is being announced now, ahead of its scheduled formal announcement next week: Due to the erroneous reportage in the American press and media that said many of our country's manufacturing facilities are about to shut down, the government has moved forward this announcement to today, to head off any kind of stock market downturn in the face of this very inaccurate, very damaging and extremely, extremely irresponsible reportage."

Jamie gave the press corps a few moments to get over their shock, and then held her hand up.

"No need to rush out to report - C-SPAN is covering this live, and the heads of the top five networks' news departments have been alerted to watch. Several foreign press and news agencies have also been similarly alerted. Any live reports that they file should stave off any kind of crisis in the stock market.

"To continue with the second item - we'd like to let the country know the good news: Buttons, the pet tabby of the First Daughter, Lindsay, is having babies. The news is only being released now, only after the veterinarians were able to give us an update on Buttons' health. I am pleased to report that Buttons is in one hundred percent good health, and she will be giving birth to her first litter very, very soon."

The reporters looked at Jamie in shock.

"Third item - this is not a White House news item, really, but I have to coverit to head off some trouble: tariffs amounting to three times the current levels are being applied to imports of dried and processed krill, which is used as part of the feedstock for approximately zero-point-one percent of the total artificially-grown, or cultured, fish in the country, as a response to similar tariffs many countries in the far east have applied to similar American products. The expected reduction in krill imports will definitely have an effect to fish production. The Fish and Wildlife Service expects imports to be halved in about ten years, causing a, hmmm... massive loss of income amounting to fifty thousand dollars spread over a ten-year period.

"For your information, I did some math. This will mean that the country will lose about five hundred dollars every month, for a period of ten years, if no action is taken to correct this."

Some of the reporters seemed to be on the verge of crying.

"Continuing on," Jamie said, "for the fourth item - the President has met with several representatives from our computer industry to talk about a new breakthrough in computers: scientists from a handful of companies in Silicon Valley have come up with a new chip design that has the potential of jumping our computing capability by several magnitudes. This makes the possibility of true artificial intelligence and other as-yet imagined breakthroughs in computer technology a distinct possibility within the next twenty years. The president will be meeting with leaders in congress to approve the funding for further research into this new, potentially Nobel Prize winning technology.

"Needless to say, as the President joked during their meeting, this will also result in better video games." Jamie chuckled.

In the silence, one of the reporters said, "Oh my god..." while a few fainted. Many looked like they wanted to faint as well, but just couldn't manage it.

"As the fifth and final item for the day," Jamie continued, "I'd like to let you know that the Office of the Press Secretary, with the full consent and support of the President, will, in behalf of the American people, be filing suit against selected news agencies. We are working with the Solicitor General's Office to identify the particulars of the cases to be filed. Even the nature of the cases - whether they are to be civil or criminal cases - has not yet been determined, as this has not happened yet in the history of American jurisprudence."

"A case!" someone exclaimed.

Jamie nodded. "Yes. If they are to be civil cases, given the possible impact that your articles would have had to the nation's economy, it's bound to be a big number - somewhere in the order of several hundred million per agency involved."

"Oh, no..."

"This is, of course, separate from the libel suit that the President and the First Daughter will be filing with several news outlets regarding the erroneous articles they published about the First Daughter." After which, a few of them actually made the sign of the cross. Jamie grinned a little. She didn't realize that there were so many Catholics in the press corps.

"Are there any questions?" she asked innocently.

Jamie waited for a minute. But since there were none, she ended the press briefing.

“I guess that's a full lid. Thank you all for your attention. I will ask that, before you leave, please check beside the logbook at the door. Most of you will have letters that are addressed to your editors. We will check this afternoon if they have been properly delivered or communicated."

Almost all of them were looking at Jamie with a kind of dread in their eyes as they filed out in a very eerie silence - eerie in that this was never how her press briefings ended.

After all the reporters had left, as well as the C-SPAN crew, she stepped down from the podium.

Jamie looked at her watch. "That's amazing, she said to one of her people. "Not even fifteen minutes and we're done for the day. Must be some kind of record."

- - - - -

The letters that the reporters brought back to their editors was an open rebuke of their reportage. The reporters signed receiving copies of the letters, and the envelopes were not sealed, so they were able to read them.

The reporters undoubtedly compared their letters to each other, and they would have noticed that they were actually standardized letters - that the wording was the same.

The set that was sent to the editors of media outlets who made the erroneous articles said that they "willfully twisted the information you received, or made unwarranted assumptions that clearly showed you did not follow normal journalistic standards to insure the veracity of your material, nor did you consider your responsibility to the public at large."

Further on, the standardized letters also said, "in order to observe due process, you are hereby formally informed that the White House press credentials of your reporters are in the process of being revoked: they were instrumental in the publication of your news agency's extremely erroneous, maliciously fictitious and demonstrably incorrect news articles this past week that were damaging to our country and economy, hence we do not want them in the White House press room."

For the small handful that didn't publish similar articles, they also received letters. The key section in these letters said the following: "You are formally informed that the White House press credentials of your reporter are hereby confirmed. We congratulate your company and your reporter for maintaining a high level of journalistic integrity and professionalism by insuring accurate reportage this past week. Your reporter and your agency are a credit to the Fourth Estate."

Over the weekend, there was a lot of posturing and blustering from the various agencies that received the negative letters, but with the repeated broadcast of the C-SPAN video on public TV or over the internet, its spread through the various social media sites (it was only a little under fifteen minutes, so it wasn't chopped up. It was one of the longest news videos to go viral in recent years), their tweets and articles were all just ridiculed. Corroborating information that came out later prevented them from spinning their erroneous coverage.

And in that short forty-eight hour weekend, Jamie acquired the reputation of a sort-of hero, and the various media outlets as outright villains.

And despite any effort of the news people to spin the story in their favor, the denizens of the web were not having any of it, especially since the media's faulty articles were all out and on record (some tried to delete their articles but that was futile - once they were out in the web, they couldn't be taken back anymore), while other sources confirmed Jamie's information (such as the First Family's vet, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Bill Gates, and the Uruguay Embassy).

Outlets like TYT and VICE didn't help either when they displayed the media's tweets and articles side by side with quotes from Jamie, lambasting the White House Press Corps, or other follow-on articles by others that showed how laughably off the mark the media were, or the funny videos that the late night comics started inundating the airwaves with. US Industries had become as iconic as other sound bites of other administrations, like "ich bin ein Berliner," "I am not a crook," "tear down that wall," "read my lips," or even "covfefe" and "smocking gun."

The following work-week saw many of these agencies scoffing (or trying to scoff) at the government's intention of filing court cases, bringing up phrases like "curtailing the freedom of the press" or making comparisons to older administrations. What they didn't count on was the twitter-verse giving Jamie support, as well as advice on how to file their case, which included a string of retired federal judges, a few ex-presidents and one still-living, ex-supreme court associate justice.

The final straw that made the news agencies capitulate was the new scandal about certain reporters not sending their letters in. Some even altered or replaced their letters. Those that didn't send their letters in claimed that they lost the letters somehow, or forgot to send them in. As for those that replaced or altered their letters, these reporters were immediately fired. Tampering with federal documents was a criminal act, after all, and the agencies couldn't defend against that.

The first one to capitulate was CNN - to CNN, the writing was on the wall, and it was best to cut their losses as soon as possible and start rebuilding their reputation. So on Wednesday, they apologized to the nation, personally to the President and his daughter, and, publicly and personally, to Jamie, for their faulty reporting, and that they shall do better in the future. They also said that there was no need to cancel their reporters' credentials as they would be surrendering them voluntarily, and that CNN will be replacing them with new staff.

Later that day, the BBC caught up to Jamie and she told them in an interview that aired that evening that she and the President were more inclined to give CNN another chance if they were sincere about doing better.

The major networks and news agencies soon followed CNN's lead, apologizing on air, and there were both major and minor changes to their organizations, mostly some reorganization and some firings.

The upshot of it all was that the White House Press Corps had changed for the better - almost all the jaded veterans were replaced with fresh faces, and Jamie's announcements were never misquoted from then on. And although her announcements, opinions and other pronouncements were now fact-checked to ridiculous lengths, her facts were never found wanting.

And after a few more weeks with her "new" press corps, she managed to establish a rapport that was rare in the history of the White House, and Jamie was on her way to becoming one of the most respected people to ever run the Press Office.

to be continued...

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