Sean Spicer’s press briefing begins at 12:00 pm today. Stream his daily briefing here, or from the video above.
Beginning with his first — and hugely controversial — press briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s daily briefings have consistently drawn public attention and scrutiny.
In February, his briefings — which are carried live by cable news networks — garnered an average of 4.3 million viewers, surpassing the viewership of many daytime soap operas. He’s become must-see TV, in a way. He was parodied on SNL two times only three weeks into Trump’s presidency.
As Vox’s Andrew Prokop writes, “Spin is considered a sort of game of skill in Washington. The most skillful practitioners of this art are able to push their preferred message or gloss on events to reporters without relying on obvious, provable lies.”
But watching Spicer can feel like a unique exercise in disbelief. Spicer’s version of “spin” includes outright falsehoods and harsh denunciations of stories that are critical of the administration. Occasionally, he has become combative with reporters, too. To date, the fact-checking site Politifact has rated seven of Spicer’s statements since he became press secretary — and determined six fell into one of three categories: “mostly false,” “false,” or “pants on fire.”
Spicer holds briefings most weekday afternoons. The exact time changes day to day based on the White House schedule.
