Press secretary Sean Spicer walked into the White House briefing room for his first official briefing Monday afternoon with one task: to restore his standing, not just with reporters and the public, but with the president he serves.

Nearly 48 hours after appearing at the briefing room podium to wrongly accuse the media of unfairly minimizing the size of the crowd on the National Mall at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Spicer spent more than an hour responding to questions from more than three dozen reporters — including questions about his own credibility — in a measured fashion.


When ABC’s Jonathan Karl first raised the question of Spicer’s assertions Saturday and his integrity more generally, the press secretary calmly vowed to tell the truth by presenting “the facts as we know them” but stopped short of apologizing. He defended his assertion that Trump’s inaugural was the “most watched” ever because of internet streaming, which is impossible to quantify, and blamed an erroneous statement about Metro ridership on faulty reports from outside the White House.

“It’s an honor to do this, and yes, I believe that we have to be honest with the American people,” Spicer told reporters at Monday’s briefing. “I think sometimes we can disagree with the facts. There are certain things that we may not fully understand when we come out, but our intention is never to lie to you.”

In an interview with POLITICO, Spicer declined to say what the president told him after Saturday's briefing or whether the president instructed him to say the exact words that he said in that appearance. "Of course I got feedback," Spicer said. "I don't discuss private conversations."

Earlier Saturday, Trump had insisted in remarks at CIA headquarters that the media had lied about attendance at his swearing-in, claiming areas of the Mall were full though aerial photographs showed the crowds there were sparse.

At Monday’s briefing, Spicer reframed his earlier comments as a plea for more favorable media coverage. “The default narrative is always negative, and it’s demoralizing,” Spicer said. “Sometimes we’ll make mistakes — I promise you that. But it’s not always gotta be negative.”

Spicer’s Saturday afternoon appearance was dedicated almost entirely to attacking reports that were unflattering to the new president. According to a person close to the president, Trump, who watched the briefing on television, was angry about it and groused to aides about Spicer’s hostile delivery.

Along with bringing out photographs to make his point about inaugural crowd size, Spicer also excoriated a White House pool reporter for making claims that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from Trump’s Oval Office. The report was quickly corrected after White House officials sent photographs showing that the bust remained in place. Spicer tweeted that he accepted the reporter’s apology on Friday night.

Spicer’s Wikipedia page was edited several times Sunday. For instance, his picture was temporarily replaced with that of “Baghdad Bob,” Saddam Hussein’s spokesman during his regime’s final days, who has been immortalized for his predictions of Iraq’s coming victory. Another edit said Spicer “is the first troll to serve in the role” of White House press secretary.

“It was a terrible first impression, an awful first impression. Whether they have credibility will depend on whether it continues going forward,” said Charles Bierbauer, a former CNN White House reporter and Soviet Union correspondent who is now dean of the University of South Carolina’s journalism school.

All administrations, he said, attempt to control the press. “Neither the press secretary, and certainly not the president, would want to get caught in a lie,” Bierbauer continued. “That was always the rule.”

Spicer said Monday evening that it bothered him that he was widely derided for being a liar. “Of course it bothered me that people questioned my desire to be honest and trustworthy,” he said.

He said Saturday had been a difficult day because Trump was upset about the coverage of his inauguration and that he would “do whatever I can for a better outcome next time.”

Throughout Monday’s briefing, Spicer continued to make statements contradicted by facts: that Trump “saved 1,000 jobs” at the Indianapolis Carrier plant (the real number is closer to 730); that the millions of Americans who took part in protests Saturday weren’t “against anything” in particular; that Trump has released a document proving he has divested himself of his business interests (he hasn’t).

But unlike on Saturday, Spicer spoke in a calm tone of voice. He smiled repeatedly. He took questions. And his answers on questions about truth, facts and the media amounted to a defiant message delivered in a less defiant tone: that misstatements from the White House are to be viewed as unintentional, while erroneous media reports about Trump should be interpreted to reveal a broader bias and a “constant attempt to undermine his credibility.”

In his comments to POLITICO, he said no one had proved him wrong that more people watched Trump’s swearing-in on tablets and other devices than other presidents’ inaugurations.

“There’s a big difference from what a lot of the media elite saw and what a lot of the rest of the country saw Saturday,” he said. “A lot of people outside the media bubble said they liked we were standing up for the president.”

“Everyone understood what he was trying to do, and it was largely effective,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP strategist in Washington. “It was important in a way for him not to say ‘I misled you,’ because that’s a trap in and of itself. He effectively tried to contextualize what he said on the crowd size and seemed to get to a space where it appeared his perspective was at least defensible. And he talked for almost 90 minutes, showed a willingness to take all kinds of questions and made enough news to let Saturday’s controversy melt away and be forgotten.”

Throughout the briefing, Spicer demonstrated the adroitness typical of past White House press secretaries, steering clear of reporters’ efforts to pin him down on more complicated subjects. After stating that Trump would be open to working with “anyone,” including Russia, to combat ISIS, Spicer hedged on a follow-up question on whether that includes Syrian President Bashar Assad. “We’re going to smartly do this,” he said. In response to a question about whether Trump might order the intelligence community to end its investigation into Russia’s interference in last year’s presidential election, Spicer said only that Trump had not yet given any indication that he would do so.

“If the ball was loose on Saturday, Sean recovered it today,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary for George W. Bush. “His tone was so much more effective today. Tone is one of the press secretary’s best weapons; use it wisely. He did today. He was tough, forceful but not over the top.”

The cleanup effort was as much an attempt to ease tensions with the White House press corps as it was to restore his standing with Trump. “Look, there’s a fine line in Trump world — appeasing your boss and trying to keep your relationships in the media,” said one source who knows both men. “The first effort [by Spicer] didn’t get the balance right, and I think he knows that. I think he’ll figure it out, but it takes some time with Trump.”

Spicer said he thought that after Monday’s briefing he was on a surer footing inside the White House and with the press corps. On Monday afternoon, Spicer was positioned behind Trump at a White House event. “I think today was a great representation of what our relationship can be,” he told POLITICO.

