The White House press secretary’s denial of a New York Times report that claims Donald Trump “watches television in a bathrobe” just got subjected to massive Twitter take down.

The Times article painted an unsettling picture of life in the White House, with aides unable to locate light switches being forced to meet in the dark, visitors being left to find their own way out of the building after meetings and a “darkened, mostly empty West Wing”.

Sean Spicer said the story was “so riddled with inaccuracies and lies” that the New York Times owed Trump an apology. He took particular issue with the bathrobe mention, which he said was “literally the epitome of fake news”.

“I don’t think the president owns a bathrobe,” he said. “He definitely doesn’t wear one.”

The president, it was reported, spent considerable time “watching television in his bathrobe” and marking up negative news reports with a black Sharpie.

Trump, too, tweeted that the report by the “failing” newspaper was “total fiction”.

Then Twitter responded: Within hours after Spicer remarks, photographs of Donald Trump wearing a bathrobe started flooding social media.

This user wondered about the basis for Spicer’s assertion.

Others were even more creative:

What in the hell? My feed is full of Trump bathrobe photos. pic.twitter.com/giltIo42fq — MsG ? (@MsGordo) February 7, 2017

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