Sean Spicer’s Second First Press Briefing Was Saner, But Few Details on Policy

On Monday, two days after White House spokesman Sean Spicer took to the press room for the first time to rant at the White House press corps for accurately reporting on U.S. President Donald Trump’s inaugural crowd size (becoming a meme in the process), he returned to the lectern. This time, he largely avoided self-inflicted wounds and sketched the Trump administration’s evolving policy on trade, China, and the intelligence community’s investigations into Russian links with the Trump campaign.

After beginning with a joke about his lack of popularity with White House reporters, Spicer detailed Trump’s breakfast with business leaders, emphasizing Trump’s emphasis on fair trade. Spicer noted that, in withdrawing Monday from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump is ushering in a new era of bilateral trade deals with allies around the globe. But such trade pacts can take years to negotiate and get approved, leaving a vacuum in the meantime.

When asked to clarify Trump’s comments Saturday at the CIA, suggesting the United States should take oil from Iraq, Spicer said Trump has been clear throughout the campaign that American taxpayers don’t just want to send blank checks when becoming involved overseas. But Spicer didn’t make clear if the administration actually intends to grab other countries’ resources, which would be illegal.

Spicer also sought to clarify one element of Trump’s visit to the CIA, where some remarks were greeted with applause. Reports have surfaced that those clapping were brought by the Trump team; other reports said that CIA officials applauded. Spicer maintained that those cheering for Trump at the CIA were from the CIA, and not Trump staff or supporters.

He neither confirmed nor denied that the president would take Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson’s stance, as stated at his confirmation hearing, on the South China Sea — that is, that the United States would prevent China from accessing what it claims is its territory. He just said that Trump will defend America’s interest, leaving it unclear if Tillerson’s impromptu revision of decades of policy was a misstep or a real shift.

After reports over the weekend that Trump was ready to fulfill his promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Spicer declined to comment, nor would he detail the discussion to take place between Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday. “We’re on working day one,” he repeatedly said on day four of the Trump presidency.

Spicer said that Trump spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi about trade and the joint fight against terrorism. He did not specify whether he would cooperate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Also on Russia, Spicer said that the Trump administration has not ordered intelligence agencies to stop investigating anything; at present, six agencies are looking into Trump’s ties to Russia. The Wall Street Journal most recently reported a government investigation into national security adviser Mike Flynn’s phone calls to Russian officials in late December.

Spicer also said that Trump resigned from his companies, as he had pledged to do before taking office, a step meant to minimize the conflicts of interest in the new administration. But no documents were made available to back up that claim.

The most heated exchange was between Spicer and Jonathan Karl of ABC.

Will you pledge to never say something non-factual?, Karl asked.

Spicer said he would, but that sometimes he might disagree with the facts. But his intention, he said, is never to lie. Misspeaking from the White House briefing room is like needing to issue a journalistic correction, he explained. “There are many mistakes that the media makes all the time.”

He later went on to reiterate his belief that the media is attacking a president who wants only to unite the country. “It’s a little demoralizing,” he said, asking, once again, why the story isn’t on cabinet nominees who’ve yet to be approved instead of crowd sizes. Many nominees filed incomplete paperwork accompanying their confirmation hearings, and Senate Democrats have insisted on examining some picks in greater detail.

Asked about the unemployment rate, Spicer appeared unable to say what it is. (As of the December 2016 report, it was, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.7 percent.) Trump, he said, was more interested in caring for Americans. Too often in Washington, Spicer actually said, “we get our heads wrapped around a number, a statistic.”

Indeed.

Photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images