They are also a form of performance art for a president who has the instincts of a showman, and whose focus on building suspense and captivating an audience drives many of his decisions. Like the fiery, freewheeling rallies that powered his campaign, the presidential “listening sessions” are one way in which Mr. Trump has brought his reality show instincts to his next act as a politician.
The meetings have produced little in the way of concrete movement on major policy issues, and some Republican officials complain privately that they have only undercut the potential for such progress, because they show a president devoid of clear views. But they are nothing, lawmakers in both parties agree, if not entertaining.
“I thought it was fascinating television, and it was surreal to actually be there,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican, said this past week of Mr. Trump’s meeting on gun legislation. “Wild,” was the assessment from Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota.
Perhaps more important for the White House, they are, advisers note, one hour of live television when nobody is criticizing the president.
Mr. Trump put on a particularly riveting show on Wednesday, when he openly challenged the National Rifle Association, which has strongly supported him, and lectured Republicans on their approach to gun policy.
“You’re afraid of the N.R.A., right?” he asked Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Shortly afterward, he cut off Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the Republican whip, who was shot and seriously injured at a baseball practice last year.
“You’ll never get it passed,” Mr. Trump said of a bill to vastly expand the concealed carrying of weapons, stunning Mr. Scalise into silence.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and an ardent champion of gun control, sat immediately to Mr. Trump’s left, grinning giddily as he encouraged her to “add what you have” to a bipartisan gun safety measure.
“If you help,” Ms. Feinstein quickly replied, a glint in her eye.
The president’s aides say the sessions feed his desire to pull back the curtain to allow the public to witness him doing his job.
“He’s in his element,” said Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s communications director. “It’s what he does best, whether it’s in real estate as a negotiator, but also as a television executive, he understands the value of showing people what happens inside the room.”
Other observers hold a less charitable view: that like much of what happens on reality television, Mr. Trump’s meetings are manufactured spectacles that have no impact on the president’s decisions.
“These meetings are fictions,” said Michael D’Antonio, Mr. Trump’s biographer, who has watched him for decades. “He knows that he’s good TV, and it’s as if he’s saying, ‘Come on in, cameras, come see how it’s really done,’ but, of course, it isn’t how it’s really done. It’s another performance.”
Mr. Trump, he added, has always reveled in presenting a spectacle — he tried his hand at producing on Broadway when he was a 23-year-old fresh out of the Wharton business school.
“He really likes stage sets and all of what makes for good theater,” Mr. D’Antonio said. “This was his first love.”
White House officials regard the sessions as a way of disrupting what had become a frustrating cycle in which Mr. Trump’s private discussions with lawmakers or ordinary citizens would yield unflattering disclosures. That was the case in January when the president made a profane reference to Haiti and African countries during a meeting with lawmakers on immigration.
It is customary for the White House to allow reporters and news cameras to document a few minutes of a president’s meetings with lawmakers, activists or ordinary citizens. On most days, such “pool sprays” are the only opportunity for the White House press corps to lay eyes on the president and ask him questions directly on the news of the day.
Barack Obama promised as a candidate in 2008 that he would have negotiations on health care televised on C-SPAN. Those sessions never materialized, but in 2010, Mr. Obama allowed cameras into a nearly seven-hour bipartisan meeting on the issue at Blair House, across the street from the White House. He grew testy at times, sparring with Republicans he argued were being intransigent.
It was never repeated.
Mr. Trump has found the format more satisfying. Broadcasting the president’s meetings, contended one senior White House official, deprives his political opponents of the ability to drive the discussion and forces lawmakers to stake out a public position in front of television cameras.
It also produces the kinds of headlines Mr. Trump plainly adores — about how he has reached out across the political aisle, expressed openness to new ideas, and been willing to stake out an unpopular position.
“I’ll take the heat,” Mr. Trump declared during his nearly hourlong televised session on immigration in January, when he shocked attendees by saying that he was open to a sweeping deal that would eventually grant millions of undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.
“My whole life has been heat,” the president added. “I like heat, in a certain way.”
But not long after the cameras exited, Mr. Trump retreated, saying that any immigration overhaul would have to come with stiff new restrictions.
The cycle appeared to be repeating itself this past week after the session on guns. The White House was noncommital about what measures Mr. Trump would accept, and the N.R.A. said after speaking with him that he opposed “gun control.”
“One hour of television,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Senate Democrat, “won’t get assault weapons off our streets.”
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