Gene Simmons gives a briefing on the Pentagon podium who has not seen a spokesman for almost a year

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The only other person to be on the podium of the Pentagon's briefing room in the last year? The movie star Gerard Butler, who was there last October to promote a new film.

This is only the last sign of the Trump administration's persistent marginalization of the press conference, a long channel through which the president and cabinet communicated their policies and priorities to the media and the public.

Simmons was on Thursday to speak with Defense Department staff and meet with outreach officials as part of a Pentagon initiative to engage the general public in military activities. He also visited the White House later in the day.

Gene Simmons at the podium of the Pentagon's briefing room (Credit: Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr)

The last time a press officer informed reporters before the camera at the Pentagon was on May 31, 2018. The White House press conference, meanwhile, is at the heart of an unprecedented drought . Next Friday, it will be 67 days for White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to hold a press briefing.

"The White House has not held a press conference for so long that the lecture hall lectern is literally taking dust," commented Wednesday the CNN reporter on the White House, Maegan Vazquez, by publishing a photo of the particles that had accumulated there.

Since Trump was elected, the assistants have made it clear that changes need to be made to the daily press conference, initially subject to a ban on cameras.

But two years after the beginning of the Trump presidency, the changes to the format have given way to what sometimes looks like the virtual extinction of tradition.

Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr of CNN contributed to the report.

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