Spicer says accusations he treated reporter unfairly are ‘demeaning to her’

One day after a heated briefing-room exchange with April Ryan, a correspondent with American Urban Radio Networks, White House press secretary Sean Spicer praised the longtime White House reporter as a “tough woman” and said accusations that he had treated Ryan unfairly are “demeaning to her.”

Spicer took objection during Tuesday’s press briefing to a question from Ryan about possible ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, pointedly joking that “if the president put Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that’s a Russian connection.”


As Ryan sought to clarify, Spicer accused her of attempting to advance an “agenda” and told her to stop shaking her head.

“We have very spirited back-and-forths, and I think that’s what makes her a tough reporter,” Spicer said in a Wednesday morning interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “Frankly, I’m kind of astonished. I think if you look at the exchanges I have with Jonathan Karl or Peter Alexander or a number of the other individuals in the press briefing room, Jim Acosta from CNN, we go back and forth all the time, rather heatedly in fact.”

“It’s frankly demeaning for some folks to say that she can’t take it,” he continued.

In her own Wednesday morning interview on CNN’s “New Day,” Ryan, who is black, stopped short of accusing the press secretary of treating reporters differently based on their gender or sex but did note a recent “pattern” that also included Spicer’s recent characterization of a female POLITICO reporter as an “idiot with no real sources.”

Ryan said she would pay closer attention to Spicer’s treatment of her and others in coming days. More broadly, she complained that the press is “under attack by this administration,” which she said is interested in “discrediting credible media.”

On Hewitt’s radio show, Spicer insisted that not only does he not pull punches in dealing with female reporters or reporters of different races, it would be a dereliction of his responsibilities as press secretary if he did. Spicer said it is his obligation to “push back tough” against any reporter leveling allegations or otherwise challenging the Trump administration – Ryan included.

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“She’s a tough reporter,” he said. “She grew up in Baltimore. She knows how to mix it up with the best of them. But to suggest that somehow because of her gender or her race she’d be treated differently I think is frankly demeaning to her. She’s a tough woman that fights every day to get out there for her publication and her audience to get the questions that she wants answered and I respect that. I really do.”