During a Covid-19 press conference on Friday, President Donald Trump defended the Senators who dumped stocks in January, after a briefing on the coronavirus.
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer asked the president, “are you concerned about members of congress that may have used information they learned on updates to sell stocks and profits of this?”
“I saw some names, I know all of them. I know everyone mentioned Dianne Feinstein, I guess, and a couple of others. I don’t know too much about what it is about, but I find them to all be very honorable people, that’s all I know, and they said they did nothing wrong. I find them, the whole group, very honorable,” Trump responded.
“So, the whole group would include Richard Burr, the head of the Intelligence Committee, and it also would include Senator Kelly Loeffler, so the question is whether or not they should be investigated for that behavior?” Francesca Chambers, White House correspondent for McClatchy then asked the president.
Trump then attempted to place blame on Senator Dianne Feinstein — the lone Democrat of the five senators who dumped stocks.
“Well, it also includes Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, you didn’t mention her name,” Trump remarked during the press conference. “Why didn’t you mention her name? I think she’s a really honorable person, by the way,”
“Any Senator?” Chambers pressed.
“I don’t know, because I would have to look at it. Possibly, but I find them to be honorable people,” Trump answered.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday offered a cryptic explanation for President Trump’s incomplete, misspelled tweet that went viral overnight.
“The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” Spicer told reporters.
The spokesman’s refusal to admit Trump made a mistake prompted laughter from members of the media at the White House.
Spicer said he wasn’t concerned about the president posting confusing tweets late at night.
Shortly after midnight, Trump tweeted, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”
The message unleashed a torrent of reactions from Twitter users who tried to define the term – or simply made fun of it.
Trump deleted the tweet shortly before 6 a.m., and posted a new message that read, “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ???”
Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe" ??? Enjoy!
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer got into a heated debate with reporters on Tuesday when they confronted him with President Donald Trump’s accusations about them producing “fake news.”
When asked by a reporter to list an example of “fake news,” Spicer pointed to one tweet by a BBC reporter that incorrectly claimed that Trump was not wearing a translation earpiece while talking with foreign leaders over the weekend.
When the BBC reporter realized his mistake, he issued a public correction less than two hours later, although this wasn’t enough to stop Spicer from chastising him regardless.
“On Friday, the president was having a great discussion at the G7 and someone from the BBC, and ultimately an incoming reporter for the New York Times retweeted that the president was being rude by disrespecting the Italian prime minister,” Spicer complained. “When in fact, you all in all of the meetings watched the president with that one earpiece that’s been used by all the other presidents… That’s just fake!”
Reporters in the room pushed back, however, by noting that the one reporter’s false tweet did not generate any stories at major newspapers and was quickly corrected.
“I was asked to give an example, and I did it,” a testy Spicer shot back.
When another reporter again pointed out that one false tweet from a BBC reporter didn’t drive news coverage for the president’s trip, Spicer chided them for saying the tweet wasn’t a big deal.
“Well, thank you, I appreciate it, you get to decide what is big and what is not,” Spicer said sarcastically. “A lot of things have been pushed out based on unnamed unaccountable sources that is very troubling.”
The White House has a new explanation for its decision not to immediately fire National Security Adviser Michael Flynn after learning that he could be the target of Russian blackmail efforts: The acting attorney general, who supplied that information, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton.
On January 26, Sally Yates, then acting attorney general, met with White House Counsel Donald McGahn to warn him that Flynn could be compromised by the Russians. He had lied to the Vice President Mike Pence about the content of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, and the Russians knew he had lied. But President Donald Trump waited 18 days before showing Flynn the door for lying to Pence.
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer defended the administration’s decision to keep Flynn on as national security adviser for more than two weeks after Yates’ warning by implying that Yates, a Barack Obama appointee, could not be trusted because she was “a strong supporter of Clinton.”
“One thing that I think is important to note is, let’s look at, again, how this came down,” Spicer said. “Someone who is not exactly a supporter of the president’s agenda, who a couple days after this first conversation took place refused to uphold a lawful order of the president’s…she had come here, given a heads up, told us there were materials, and at the same we did what we should do. Just because someone comes in and gives you a heads up about something and says I want to share some information, doesn’t mean that you immediately jump the gun and go take an action.”
Spicer continued, “I think if you flip this scenario and say, what if we had just dismissed someone because a political opponent of the president had made an utterance, you would argue that it was pretty irrational to act in that manner.”
After being asked multiple times if the White House took any steps to reduce Flynn’s role or access to classified information after receiving Yates’ warning, Spicer finally said, “I’m not aware of any.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer pushed back hard on Wednesday against the notion that President Donald Trump had tricked voters by leaving existing border fence in place instead of building a wall as he had promised during the campaign.
After Breitbart correspondent Charlie Spiering pointed out that Trump was not “fighting for the wall that he promised,” Spicer shared an photograph of a broken border fence.
“Those images represent our nation’s current border security,” Spicer said. “So every time that [undocumented immigrants] cut through, break through, it’s costing just under a thousand bucks for us to go out and have to fix.”
According to the press secretary, Trump’s budget provides over $300 million to replace 40 miles of “border fencing.”
“Just one question about the photos,” Spiering interrupted. “Are those photos of fences or walls.”
Spicer insisted that his photos were of walls, even though he referred to them as fences earlier.
“There are various types of walls that can be built under the legislation that was just passed,” he opined.
“That is a fence,” Spiering said.
“That is called a levee wall,” Spicer replied.
“It’s not the wall the president promised,” CNN correspondent Jim Acosta observed.
“Hold on, Jim, we’re going to take turns,” Spicer said.
“So you’re basically just telling the president’s supporters to be satisfied with this existing tough-guy fencing thing until he’s ready to build the wall?” Spiering asked.
“No!” Spicer exclaimed. “What I’m telling anybody is that the president said he’s going to build a wall and he’s doing it. And he’s using the best technology.”
In his press conference on Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer directly contradicted President Donald Trump’s comments earlier in the day, denying the literal meaning of the president’s words.
The matter concerned a bizarre televised interview Trump gave earlier on Monday to CBS’ John Dickerson from the Oval Office.
“The president said, ‘I don’t stand by anything.’ How is the American public supposed to digest that, supposed to trust what the president says when he himself says, of his own comments, I don’t by anything,” a pool reporter asked Spicer.
“I think the point is, he clearly stands by that,” Spicer said. “That’s something that’s made very clear if you look at the entire back and forth exchange.”
In fact, the exchange is a few minutes of confused verbal sparring in which Trump word-for-word says “I don’t stand by anything.” It began when Dickerson asked about Trump’s relationship with President Obama, which Trump took as an opportunity to bring up — albeit in the form of veiled insinuations — his unproven allegation that Obama wiretapped him.
“Do you stand by that claim about him?” Dickerson asked.
“I don’t stand by anything,” Trump replied. “I just — you can take it the way you want. I think our side’s been proven very strongly. And everybody’s talking about it,” Trump continued.
He refused to clarify what he meant by “you can take it the way you want,” and repeated it several times before abruptly ending the interview.
But later in the day, when the matter came up in the press conference, Spicer insisted that the exchange went very differently.
“You don’t have to ask me,” he responded to one of Dickerson’s attempts to clarify his muddy assertions. “Because I have my own opinions. You can have your own opinions.”
Trump made the explosive allegation on Twitter on March 4th, claiming that Obama wiretapped him, and since then the White House has scrambled to come up with a justification for the tweets. In the months since, they’ve cited media reports, classified intelligence, and even alleged that it was carried out by foreign spy agencies — a false claim for which they had to apologize to Great Britain.
Yet while Trump continues to insist that their case has been validated, the White House has produced no credible evidence to back up the president’s unproven allegations.
The FBI, NSA, and DOJ have all said they know of no evidence backing up the claim.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday insisted to reporters that it did not have a responsibility to provide documents used in the hiring of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn because they were filled out in the days before President Donald Trump took office.
At Tuesday’s press briefing, Spicer was peppered with questions about why the White House refused to provide documents related to an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Spicer told reporters that the documents were filled out “during the Obama administration” and “those are not documents that the White House would ever possess.”
“From your perspective, is there no obligation either from the transition [team] or the White House to do anything more than you have done?” CBS correspondent Major Garrett asked.
“Everything that the White House has been asked to do, the only documents that were made available to [Congress] that they asked for were the ones that the Department of Defense had,” Spicer insisted.
“How about these calls made where [Flynn] was working during the transition on behalf of a future President Trump?” Garrett wondered. “Aren’t those things that you should have some responsibility or obligation to provide if you can?”
“It’s a question [of] if you can,” Spicer replied. “To ask for every call a national security adviser made is pretty outlandish.”
“Those calls were made on behalf of the Trump transition were they not?” Garrett pressed.
“When?” Spicer said. “We started this administration on Jan. 20. All the information that they’re talking about occurred prior to him being at the White House.”
“Working for the transition!” Garrett exclaimed.
“Not at the White House!” Spicer shot back. “Everything that is being questioned occurred prior to Jan. 20th.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer came under fire Tuesday after saying that Adolf Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons” against his own people like Syrian strong man Bashar Al-Assad.
He later sought to clarify his remarks in three separate statements.
Spicer, speaking from the White House podium at the daily press briefing, said that Hitler, whom he called “despicable,” did not use “the gas on his own people the same way Assad used them.”
The outrage on social media was swift, with reporters and public figures blasting Spicer’s comments — and saying they were particularly offensive coming during the Jewish holiday of Passover.
The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect called on President Donald Trump to can Spicer.
“Sean Spicer now lacks the integrity to serve as White House press secretary, and President Trump must fire him at once,” Steven Goldstein, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum used Spicer’s gaffe as a moment to remind of the horrors of the Holocaust.
At the briefing, Spicer pointed out that Assad dropped chemical weapons in the “middle of towns.”
U.S. officials said the Assad regime used Sarin in strikes on the Syrian people in a deadly attack last week that prompted U.S. military strikes in retaliation.
Nazis murdered Jews in gas chambers during the Holocaust by the millions with the use of chemical gas agents like Zyklon B.
Spicer acknowledged that Hitler did bring gas “into the Holocaust centers…I understand that.”
He later sought to clarify his remarks in multiple statements and said he was not trying to diminish the Holocaust.
“In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust,” Spicer said in his third attempt at clarification. “I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”
The White House on Monday walked back a key point of President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegation that President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower during the 2016 election.
Namely, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump wasn’t referring to wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping.
“I think there’s no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election,” Spicer said. “The President used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities.”
Wiretapping is a narrowly defined surveillance activity that involves tapping into “a telephone or telegram wire in order to get information,” according to Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Spicer also said that Trump was referring to the Obama administration broadly — and not accusing Obama of personal involvement — when he tweeted that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” and accused Obama of being a “bad” or “sick guy.”
Spicer’s comments came on the same say as the deadline for the Justice Department to provide evidence to the House Intelligence Committee to back up Trump’s claim. The White House has so far refused to provide any evidence, and numerous former officials have denied the existence of any warrant to wiretap Trump Tower.
A week earlier, Spicer said Trump’s tweet “speaks for itself” and declined to provide any further explanation.
But Monday, Spicer was open to providing an interpretation for Trump’s tweet, saying the President told Spicer he was referring to means of surveillance beyond wiretapping in his tweets accusing Obama of doing just that.
But in each of the four tweets Trump fired off leveling the accusation, Trump referred specifically to phone tapping — and only used quotation marks in two of those.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” Trump said in his first tweet.
“Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president?” he asked in the next.
Then, Trump tweeted that Obama “was tapping my phones in October” and had stooped low “to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process.”
But Spicer was not the only White House official to provide an alternative definition of the word “wiretap” despite Trump’s clear language.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also addressed the wiretapping claims in an interview Sunday with the Bergen County Record, suggesting that other covert surveillance methods used by the CIA — as revealed by Wikileaks last week — could have been used in Trump Tower by the Obama administration.
“Do you know whether Trump Tower was wiretapped?” Bergen County Record columnist Mike Kelly asked Conway on Sunday.
“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway said, before suggesting that surveillance could take place through phones, TVs or “microwaves that turn into cameras.”
White House spokesman Sean Spicer was accosted by an Indian-American woman — who peppered him with questions about committing “treason” and working for a “fascist” like President Trump — as he shopped in an Apple store over the weekend.
The encounter has since gone viral after the woman who filmed it, Shree Chauhan, 33, claimed online that Spicer had made a racist statement to her, saying: “It’s such a great country that allows you to be here.”
“Unlike this administration, I do not believe in ‘alternative facts.’ I believe in facts. I do not believe in accusing someone of this level of racism, when if in fact it was not,” Chauhan wrote Sunday in a lengthy post on Medium.
“So I watched the video over and over again,” she said. “And his words were clear…’Such a great country that allows you to be here.’ That is racism and it is an implied threat.”
Chauhan, who lives in Washington, D.C., filmed the interaction with Spicer on Periscope Saturday night after spotting the White House spokesman in the store. She had been there getting her iPhone fixed and said she ultimately felt the need to “speak truth to power.”
“It is customary to give public figures their space…However, given what Mr. Spicer and his boss are doing to this country, I do not believe they are entitled to these norms and customs,” Chauhan explained.
In the clip, the self-described “eternal optimist” can be heard asking Spicer a series of questions, including “How does it feel to work for a fascist” and “Have you helped with the Russia stuff?”
“We have a great country,” the press secretary replies, while appearing to try to ignore Chauhan.
“Have you committed treason too? Just like the president,” she asks. “What can you tell me about Russia?”
It is after this barrage that Spicer delivers his allegedly “racist” remark, saying: “It’s such a great country that allows you to be here.”
Chauhan wrote on Medium that the response left her disgusted.
“I am still stunned by the boldness of having my citizenship threatened on camera,” she said. “I was not polite. But when does being impolite mean that I should be thrown out of the United States of America? The country I was born in, the country I was raised in, the country I love despite its flaws.”
Speaking to the Daily Mail about the video on Sunday, Chauhan shot down claims that Spicer could have been referring to the First Amendment rights of all Americans to exercise free speech when he made the comment.
“He’s the press secretary for the president of the United States,” she said. “Don’t tell me what he probably meant because he also works for this administration that has done all of these things.”
Chauhan went on to note how Trump has signed executive orders temporarily banning refugees and asylum seekers from predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa.
“He could’ve said, ‘Such a great country that allows dissent,’” she told the Mail. “There’s a lot of way that could’ve been said. To have someone who speaks for the president of the United States tell me to my face that I shouldn’t be here and I was born here — that is a real thing.”
Chauhan added that she’s feared for her safety since the day Trump was elected.
“I woke up the day after the election in fear of what would happen to someone like me. And we’ve seen what happened,” she said. “We’ve seen what happened to Indians.”
Earlier this month, a 39-year-old Seattle resident of Sikh heritage was shot by a man who reportedly shouted “go back to your country” just before pulling the trigger.
Weeks before that incident, a pair of Indian engineers were targeted by a Navy veteran who told them the same thing before blasting away at them. One of the men ended up dying and the other was wounded.
“They’re gonna spin it however they want, but there is a palatable fear that people have in this country and it is warranted,” Chauhan said. “On a regular basis, Mr. Spicer consistently defends the actions — and I believe unconstitutional actions — and lies on behalf of this administration.
“Spicer has the protection of the podium when he’s in the press room,” she added. “I didn’t have time to sit there and ask questions I would ask if I was a reporter…Maybe having someone like a regular person ask those questions instead [of reporters] — that might work.”
