Who Is Sean Spicer? Trump's Press Secretary Gets Facts Wrong, Attacks Reporters Despite Years Of Public Affairs Experience

For someone with nearly two decades of public relations experience, President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, has fielded plenty of criticism for his inaccurate statements and adversarial relationship with the press, with only three press conferences on his record. The third, considered the first “official” one, was held Monday afternoon.

At the press conference, Spicer, who had served as the Republican National Committee’s communications director and chief strategist, appeared to walk back on his more combative comments at the first meeting with the White House press corps.

Spicer then switched gears, attacking a journalist who erroneously reported that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been moved from the Oval Office, calling the allegations a “rush to judgment.”

The new press secretary, who is also Trump’s communications director, also faced widespread backlash for making false claims about the size of crowds at the president's inauguration ceremony Friday, pointing to back-to-back photos of the National Mall that were reposted on social media sites over the weekend.

Spicer alleged that the photos were construed by an illusion created by grass coverings on the lawns of the national mall, which he asserted had been used for “the first time in our nation’s history.” As many fact-checkers, including Politifact and CNN’s Reality Check, pointed out, this was not the case. Spicer’s claim that Trump attracted “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration” was also widely disproved, and labeled by some as “propaganda.”

A Navy officer who worked as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Media and Public Affairs under George W. Bush, Spicer painted the inaccuracy as an honest mistake at the Monday conference.

“It’s a two-way street… the media makes mistakes all the time,” he said, adding that former President Ronald Reagan “didn’t have YouTube, Facebook or the internet.”

After an ABC reporter asked whether it was his intention to tell the truth to the press corps at his podium, Spicer responded that the White House’s “intention” was “never to lie to you.”

“It is. It’s an honor to do this, and yes, I believe that we have to be honest with the American people,” Spicer said. “I think sometimes we can disagree with the facts.”