White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer speaks during a daily briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House January 23, 2017 in Washington, DC.
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“Sure, it was the most watched inaugural”, he said but this time included the audience that watched on television and online, and did not directly refer to the actual numbers who attended the inauguration. “The crowds aren’t that big, he’s not that successful.’ The narrative – and the default narrative is always negative and it’s demoralizing”.
That, in turn, sparked 48 hours of intense coverage, with news organizations either accusing Trump and Spicer of lying or of picking a petty fight that stepped on the new president’s own message.
“What truly matters is not which party controls our government but whether our government is controlled by the people”, he said. It’s not known for instance how many people streamed the inauguration through a variety of sources on many different platforms. Trump said on Twitter early on Monday that he planned to discuss U.S. manufacturing with executives but gave no other details. When asked if he’s ready to work with Syrian President Bashar Assad, he said: “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves”.
So, during his first official press briefing on 01/23/17, Spicer tried to spin the aforementioned falsehood that he told.
“On this matter of crowd size, I think it is a symbol for the unfair and incomplete treatment that this president often receives”, Conway told Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s “Meet The Press”.
On Monday, Spicer didn’t apologize for his statements or offer a correction, but said he had offered the facts available to him at the time, similar to the way that the press must sometimes issue retractions.
Welcome to the world of alternative facts.
When asked about the veracity of Mr Spicer’s claims, she said he had given “alternative facts”.
“Over and over again, the MLK bust”, Spicer said, referencing a false report that Trump had removed a bust of MLK from the Oval Office. He said he had received incorrect information about Inauguration day ridership on the Washington Metro system when he initially claimed the system was used more Friday than for Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration. Numerous outlets have reported that the response from Central Intelligence Agency employees was uneasy and mixed, and that the applause was from people brought by the Trump administration.
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During the briefing, the White House reasserted that illegal immigrants with criminal records would be the focus of the stepped-up deportation drive promised by President Donald Trump.
