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Sean Spicer says he never ‘knowingly’ lied to the American people
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Sean Spicer says he never ‘knowingly’ lied to the American people

Andrew Couts—
Sean Spicer on Good Morning America

Screenshot via ABC News

What would the fact-checkers say?

Sean Spicer claims he never “knowingly” lied while serving as President Donald Trump‘s White House press secretary.

In an interview with Good Morning America, ABC New’s Paula Faris asked Spicer whether he has “lied to the American people.”

“I don’t think so,” Spicer said.  “I never cheated on my taxes.”

Faris pressed further: “Unequivocally you can say no?”

“Look, again,” Spicer replied, “you want to find some thing—I’ve not knowingly done anything to do that, no.”

Spicer resigned from the Trump administration in late July after the president appointed Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director. Scaramucci resigned less than two weeks after his appointment.

Since that time, Spicer has joined a high-paid speakers circuit. He recently had a cameo during the 2017 Emmy Awards in which he spoofed the first press conference of the Trump White House when he infamously and misleadingly asserted that Trump’s inauguration crowd “was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period … both in person and around the globe.” The claim was largely rejected as false based on photographic evidence, which inspired White House adviser Kellyanne Conway to claim that the Trump administration operates on “alternative facts.”

Asked to defend that claim by Faris, Spicer said he could have been “a lot more specific with what we were talking about in terms of the universe.”

“I think it might’ve been better to be a lot more specific with what we were talking about in terms of the universe, not focus so much on photographic evidence, et cetera,” Spicer said. “I could’ve probably had more facts at hand and been more articulate in describing … the entirety of what that day was about.”

Of the few Spicer statements fact-checking site Politifact has checked, 36 percent were rated as true, mostly true, or half true. The remaining 64 percent were rated mostly false, false, or “pants on fire.”

Andrew Couts

Andrew Couts

Andrew Couts is the former editor of Layer 8, a section dedicated to the intersection of the Internet and the state—and the gaps in between. Prior to the Daily Dot, Couts served as features editor and features writer for Digital Trends, associate editor of TheWeek.com, and associate editor at Maxim magazine. When he’s not working, Couts can be found hiking with his German shepherds or blasting around on motorcycles.

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