He is the US president's most prominent political spokesman but his high profile didn't protect Sean Spicer from being temporarily banished from Air Force One. Spicer was among a group of Donald Trump's senior aides who were banned from the presidential aircraft a week ago after Trump erupted in frustration at his staff during an Oval Office meeting.

At the same time as Spicer is learning to find alternative means of transport, he is not spending a whole lot of time in front of the camera. Monday was the seventh straight day that Spicer, President Donald Trump's press secretary, declined to hold a televised White House press briefing, an unusually long drought for someone whose role is traditionally to be the most visible face of a presidential administration.

Instead, Spicer, who since the inauguration had become a highly rated, if often-parodied, staple of daytime television, conducted a question-and-answer session with no cameras allowed, over the objections of the White House Correspondents' Association.

The briefing was certain to be contentious. Spicer responded for the first time to explosive and unproven allegations Trump made over the weekend that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower during the presidential campaign.