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Sean Spicer's first White House press briefing – live updates Sean Spicer's first White House press briefing – live updates
(35 minutes later)
6.54pm GMT 7.26pm GMT
18:54 19:26
Spicer continues running through Trump’s diary for the day, including a meeting tonight with congressional leaders. What is the unemployment rate, Spicer is asked.
He says Obama had seven nominees confirmed by this time – “we have two”. There are several version of that, he says.
He says he will open up the press briefing with four “Skype seats” to allow non-DC journalists to join in. Trump at one point said it was 42%, he is told.
Now for questions ... Trump is not focused on statistics but on people and families, says Spicer. “Too often in Washington we get our heads wrapped around a number, a statistic,” and forget the people behind the statistics. “For too long it’s been about what number are we looking at rather than what face are we looking at,” he says.
6.50pm GMT
18:50
So far Spicer’s tone has been somewhat less aggressive than at his appearance on Saturday, with a slight moderating of his staccato delivery.
6.49pm GMT
18:49
Spicer mentions Trump’s phone conversation with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and says a visit to the US might be on the cards in the future.
6.47pm GMT
18:47
Spicer lists who was at Trump’s meeting with business leaders this morning. He says Trump wanted to take suggestions about creating jobs and would reconvene the group in a month and then quarterly.
He recaps the executive orders issued this morning, including withdrawing from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he calls “a strong signal that the Trump administration wants free and fair trade around the globe”.
UpdatedUpdated
at 6.48pm GMT at 7.26pm GMT
6.45pm GMT 7.22pm GMT
18:45 19:22
Spicer attempts to joke about the inauguration, to a few brief laughs. On renegotiating Nafta, he says an “action” has to be taken to “send notice” to Mexico and Canada – “there is a trigger within Nafta”. Trump has spoken to the leaders of Mexico and Canada and if they are willing you could renegotiate within Nafta, but if not, not, he says.
He suggests he will not be as popular as outgoing press secretary Josh Earnest. Again there is very slight laughter. 7.19pm GMT
6.44pm GMT 19:19
18:44 7.18pm GMT
Sean Spicer arrives and starts speaking at the podium. 19:18
6.38pm GMT ON ISRAEL — “There’s no decision” about moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Big walk back.
18:38 Will there be details of a UK-US trade deal when Theresa May visits on Friday? “I’m sure there will be a discussion of trade, the degree to which I don’t know yet,” he says. There may or may not be a joint press conference.
Donald Trump has begun his effort to dismantle Barack Obama’s legacy, David Smith writes, formally scrapping a flagship trade deal with 11 countries in the Pacific rim today. The new president also signed executive orders to ban funding for international groups that provide abortions, and placing a hiring freeze on non-military federal workers. The two will have a “great conversation about potential trade with the UK”, he says.
Read more here: There are no plans for an informal chat before she arrives, he says.
6.32pm GMT 7.16pm GMT
18:32 19:16
There’s a packed house for the press briefing today: He returns to the issue of the mistaken pool report by one of the White House press corps stating that the bust of Martin Luther King had been removed from the Oval Office. “Where was the apology to the president of the United States” and the “millions” (an unlikely figure) who read that, he asks. He then revises this to “a few thousand people”.
At the White House briefing room right now -- waiting for @PressSec pic.twitter.com/omOhu2FGz9 “It’s a two-way street,” he says again.
And the media have just been given a two-minute warning, by Omarosa Manigault, the former Apprentice star who is now assistant to the president. Did the media invent the feud between the CIA and Trump (as Trump has suggested, despite his own widely publicised attacks on the intelligence community)? The CIA audience was very excited and were clapping and cheering when Trump went to see them, Spicer says, avoiding the question – “that doesn’t sound like a huge feud.”
Omarosa just gave us the two minute warning 7.12pm GMT
6.25pm GMT 19:12
18:25 There are times when “we believe something to be true” or our information is not complete and the administration will put out a statement. He will present the “facts as I know them”. If he makes a mistake, he says, he’ll admit it.
All eyes are on Donald Trump’s controversial press secretary Sean Spicer today as he prepares to hold his first White House press briefing. “It’s a two way street ... the media makes mistakes all the time.”
Spicer’s first statement to the media from the famous wooden lectern in the press briefing room in the West Wing of the White House on Saturday was an aggressive and bellicose performance in which he made several demonstrably false statements and declared: “We’re going to hold the press accountable.” He left without taking questions – that seems very unlikely today. He seems to back down from the false DC Metro ridership numbers he quoted on Saturday, but he stands by his statement that the inauguration was watched by the biggest audience ever, specifically saying he means live streams, TV figures, mobile devices, and so on.
Senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway poured oil on the flames when she told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday Spicer had merely been offering “alternative facts” – a phrase that sparked outrage and fears that the so-called post-truth politics practised by Trump and his team was about to enter an even more extreme phase. “Most people believe there is truth and there are lies. ‘Alternative facts’ are lies,” former New York Times editor Jill Abramson wrote in the Guardian today. “I’m pretty sure Reagan didn’t have YouTube, Facebook, or the internet,” he says, aggressively pursuing the issue.
Others suggested the tone of the press conference and its focus on the size of the crowds at Trump’s inauguration were a deliberate attempt to distract the press from the enormous anti-Trump protests in Washington DC and around the world, and from covering Trump’s policy moves, for example an impenetrable executive order on Obamacare issued on Friday night whose impact is as yet unclear. “I came out to read a statement, and I did it. I’m here today and I’m going to stay as long as you want,” he says, to laughter.
The press conference is due to start at 1.30pm ET. Before it does, catch up on Elle Hunt’s detailed fact check of Spicer’s false claims: 7.09pm GMT
And look back over his career so far with David Smith: 19:09
He is asked about Russian claims of a joint air mission with the US in Syria, which the Pentagon has denied. Spicer says Trump would “work with any country that shares our interest in defeating Isis,” saying that applied to “Russia or anyone else.”
On the TPP he says the deal was “not putting the US interest first”.
Asked about the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, he says he does not “want to get in front of the president’s executive actions”, but he says the president wants to “maximise our use of natural resources”.
The first few questions were asked by:
New York Post
Christian Broadcast Network
Univision
Fox
April Ryan, of American Urban Radio Networks
7.04pm GMT
19:04
Asked again about Obamacare, Spicer is extremely vague. But he says Trump and “all leaders” have a mandate from the American people to “fix this system”.
7.03pm GMT
19:03
Spicer seems to be avoiding the major television networks and the Associated Press, who would normally be given the first questions.
6.58pm GMT
18:58
What message is Trump sending with his move on abortion today?
Trump is pro-life and the reinstatement of this policy backs up that value and protects “taxpayer funds”, Spicer says.
Spicer is asked about DACA recipients – undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children who Obama gave work authorisation and protection from deportation– and the White House Spanish site disappearing.
The IT folks are working overtime, he says. On DACA he says building the wall and people here illegally will be prioritised.