Popular vote loser Donald Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer held the first official press conference of the Trump regime Monday. Apparently Saturday's temper tantrum about whether or not Trump had the biggest crowd ever at his inauguration didn't count.
Monday's main theme was continuing the attack on the lying media, reaching a crescendo when Spicer spent more than three full minutes attacking the media for "demoralizing" Donald Trump by questioning the crowd size, proving just how thin-skinned his boss really is. The underlying narrative was pretty much just lies, which was clearly intended as the first question of the briefing was given to a reporter from Trump's favorite paper, the New York Post, who wrote an anti-Clinton book, lauded by the far right. The lies were legion, many of which were completely ignored by reporters in the room.
Among them: an assertion that there's been a "dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years" to justify the hiring freeze Trump ordered today. This is not true. He repeatedly asserted that Trump signed an order "withdrawing" the U.S. from TPP. The U.S. has not signed onto TPP and it's been dead on arrival in Congress—where it would have to be ratified. The U.S. could not be withdrawn from it because we weren't in it. And continuing on trade, Spicer repeatedly asserted China is engaging in bilateral trade agreements. It's not.
In talking about the global gag rule Trump reinstated today, Spicer said that the U.S. taxpayers were funding abortions overseas. That is not true.
Speaking of women, Spicer said the women's march wasn't about opposition to Trump, it wasn't "against anything" he said. Contradicting reports that Trump has not resigned from his businesses as promised, Spicer said that those documents showing he had just aren't public yet.
In the back-and-forth that resulted in Spicer's extended tantrum about how Trump had been so demoralized by the lying media, Spicer denied reports that the audience at Trump's CIA appearance on Saturday had been filled with Trump cheerleaders.
The volume of disinformation, lies, and Trump-speak is too voluminous to immediately record here. Suffice it to say, there was a flurry of noise and disinformation and that the press corps in the room didn't come prepared to combat it. They're going to have to learn how to do this a lot better.