Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s transition. POLITICO Pro subscribers receive a version of this newsletter first. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren | Email Lisa | Email Megan When DONALD TRUMP stood atop the balcony overlooking the New York Stock Exchange to ring Thursday’s opening bell, it was a triumphant photo op honoring his being named Time’s "Person of the Year." Perhaps more surprisingly, it was one of just a handful of photo ops — and public appearances — the president-elect has made since he won the presidency. And while Trump has continued to generate news in social media posts, be they announcing new appointments or trolling Canada, he’s mostly remained in seclusion inside his Mar-a-Lago estate since Election Day. The former reality star, whose need for the public’s attention was in 2017 as self-defining as his red tie, has not seemed all that interested in being seen by the press or anyone other than the advisers, friends and clubgoers inside Mar-a-Lago’s gates. His comments in an interview with Time did generate some headlines and a few tweets: Trump vowed to enlist the military to help deport undocumented immigrants to the “maximum” level allowed under the law; he criticized JOE BIDEN’s loosening of restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S.-made missiles against Russia; and he hedged on a campaign promise to bring down grocery prices on his first day in office. But the splashy roll-out didn’t dominate the news cycle, such as it is now, as it might have just a few years ago. For days if not weeks, Trump has been but a blip on the radar of cable news, which has focused on events in Syria and, above all, the killing of a health care CEO and subsequent arrest of the suspected gunman who happens to be young, rich and handsome. Whereas Trump’s transition eight years ago saw a parade of Cabinet hopefuls subjected to awkward photos and shouted questions from the pool of reporters outside the front door of his Bedminster, New Jersey, estate, his personnel news this time around has mostly come from social media, written statements and a handful of leaks to the press. Photo ops have been few and far between, even as the president-elect continues to host celebrities, billionaires, job aspirants and even the occasional foreign leader at his beachside club. KAROLINE LEAVITT, a Trump transition spokesperson who will assume the role of White House press secretary next month, declined to answer questions about Trump’s media strategy. Instead, she offered a more general statement on the transition. “President Trump put together a phenomenal Cabinet in record time because he’s been to the swamp before and knows who the best and brightest individuals are to help him drain it and serve the American people,” she said. “The majority of Americans approve of President Trump’s handling of the transition process.” It seems Trump has tired of calling in the pool of reporters who follow the president (or president-elect) to hold court about the day’s events — as he so frequently did in 2016. On Thursday, two minutes after Trump rang the bell, the print pool reporter sent an email. But she wasn’t anywhere close to Wall Street or Trump. She was somewhere in West Palm Beach, sending a brief morning note that, despite traveling to South Florida, she received no response from Trump’s team to repeated inquiries about his activities and whereabouts. If Trump’s first term was defined in large part by a hall of mirrors phenomenon — the media-obsessed president consuming and reacting to coverage of himself in real-time, ad infinitum — his approach to this transition period lends at least some credence to the idea that his second term may be somewhat different. Maybe the president, who is now 78, is just slowing down. But Trump’s dismissal of the transition pool and his sustained indifference to the media’s presence and attention are deeply out of character from the man who entered the Oval eight years ago. He has gone relatively dark at times, but usually after setbacks — the 2018 midterms, his 2020 loss and the failed Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Never, to this degree, following a triumph. Some reporters on the beat, granted anonymity to speak candidly about press dynamics with West Wing Playbook, worry it could presage a far more bullish approach to traditional journalists over the next four years. Having won back the White House after so many battles, legal and political, Trump and some of his top aides may be in a mood to exact a measure of revenge. With the press, that could mean icing reporters out, either by taking control of the briefing room seating chart or defying long-standing WHCA protocols about pools, which exist to ensure that reporters are close by the president at all times. Once Trump and his team migrate north to the White House itself, they will have a harder time avoiding the hundreds of reporters whose hard passes give them access to the campus and parts of the West Wing. Unless, of course, hard pass rules change too. “I think people thought if reporters continued going down there, Trump would eventually call the pool over [to Mar-a-Lago] and the lock-out would break,” said one veteran White House correspondent. “That hasn’t happened." MESSAGE US — Are you DONALD TRUMP? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! 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