Spicer: "Our Intention is Never to Lie to You".
SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It's an honor to do this. And, yes, I believe that we have to be honest with the American people. I think sometimes we can disagree with the facts. There are certain things that we may not fully understand when we come out. But our intention is never to lie to you.</s>CAMEROTA: All right. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer holding his first official briefing on Monday. You remember, of course, that Spicer slammed the press over the weekend for accurately covering the crowd size at Mr. Trump's inauguration. Let's discuss with CNN media analyst Bill Carter. Bill, great to see you. So, this was 79 minutes long, the longest of any first press conference in 16 years.</s>BILL CARTER, MEDIA ANALYST: Yes.</s>CAMEROTA: He called on 43 reporters, including CNN and all the traditional outlets.</s>CARTER: Right.</s>CAMEROTA: What jumped out at you?</s>CARTER: Well, I thought it was more professional than we saw initially. I thought it was a guy handling himself, you know, kind of apologetic about what he had done on Saturday.</s>CAMEROTA: Was he apologetic?</s>CARTER: A little bit. Our intention is not to lie. Things like that. He backed away from some of the facts that he got wrong. I think he did -- he handled the question extremely well. Quick answers. Gave news which I think reporters really appreciate, but then he kind of under cut it with this whole thing about you know, if you guys weren't saying all these negative things, we wouldn't be so demoralized. And I though that was sort of -- it sounds whiney to do that.</s>CUOMO: Here it is. Judge for yourself.</s>SPICER: It's about a constant theme. It's about sitting here every time and being told, no. We don't think he can do that. He'll never accomplish that. He can't win that. It won't be the biggest. It's not going to be that good. The crowds aren't that big. He's not that successful. The narrative and the default narrative is always negative and it's demoralizing.</s>CUOMO: Are we more negative on Trump than on presidents past?</s>CARTER: I don't think so. I think every time a president does something, it's questioned, challenged. That's the job. I think there's obviously -- maybe there's lingering questions from the campaign, and there's a lot of fractiousness. So, yes. People wondered whether or not he can be president. They doubted those. But they overcame those doubts. That should be a badge of honor. Not demoralizes them. They should able to say, well, you doubted us before, wait until you see what we do this time. Instead of saying, oh, we're demoralized. It seems counterintuitive. You succeeded. Why now doubt yourself? Why be insecure about it?</s>CAMEROTA: I'm also just worried about the proportion, because in the a 24-period that Chris and I were covering the inauguration, it was overwhelmingly uplifting, positive, we showed the excitement of crowds, and then to mention twice in 24 hours about the crowd size, maybe once, that they fixated on that. Does that mean that anything negative, anything they perceive as negative, they don't want to hear?</s>CARTER: I think there are particulars things. If you said a policy thing isn't working, that might not be the same as saying you're now the biggest, the best, and the tops. That seems to affect Mr. Trump more than anything. When I was covering him, when he was on the "The Apprentice", he would always say that the ratings were at the top, he was top rated show, even long after it wasn't a top rated show. It just seemed very important to him to be able to say that. And I thought, nobody cared really. But now, it's sort of like -- you can't keep saying things that aren't factually true.</s>CUOMO: Well, look, the president of the United States deserves respect and that is something that bothers people on the left and those who didn't vote for him right now because they have made it personal instead of about the position. I think that they have a point when they say the media is more negative. I think the media is more negative toward Trump than it was during a similar period with Obama, but I think there's a reason for that. I think that this president floods the zone through his own words or those of the surrogates around him with false and/or outrageous statements at a rate that is unheard of.</s>CARTER: Yes, well, that's certainly true. Every day, there's a new thing. In fact, he then said the same day this has gone on, that he didn't get enough votes because illegals voted. So, again, he brought out another thing that's completely has no evidence for it. Even if you don't think it's factually -- there's no evidence for it. But also he's taken on the media. He's called them disgusting, and, you know, the most dishonest people on earth.</s>CUOMO: Called the heads of the intelligence agencies Nazis. You know, these are the things that would have been the worst that you've heard in this genre of political talk.</s>CARTER: Right.</s>CUOMO: And it's all happen in a compressed period.</s>CARTER: In a concentrated period of it and it continues. It seems to be daily there's something that arouses this kind of hostility.</s>CUOMO: I actually think we're doing them a favor overtime because we are self-selecting what stuff that you could go after, not to. We make that decision every day where something is said, where -- if it would have been somebody else, I can't believe he said this, let's go after it. Because it's him, we choose to do things that are in the people's benefit even if there is something else to go after.</s>CARTER: In the campaign, it's a very effective thing, because he would top his previous statement with another thing and that wouldn't get covered anymore. The circus kind of moved on.</s>CAMEROTA: Something else that came out of the press conference that's an interesting development. They announced they are going to have four or five Skype seats for reporters outside of beltway. This is what was -- I mean, if you look at the postmortem, maybe everybody was too insular, maybe people were in their own echo chamber. So, now, you'll have somebody in Pittsburgh and Youngstown, Ohio, and wherever else they choose. What do you think?</s>CARTER: I think it's fine. It's acknowledgment of the way people work today. Of course, we've all used Skype. I've been on the air on Skype. It's something people are comfortable with. Let's see who they pick and who they choose. It was also interesting to see who parsed out the questions yesterday, who got first attention and they probably will continue to do that, as long as they allow people to ask questions, I don't think there's a problem with that.</s>CUOMO: Let me ask you something else, the "SNL" writer who got suspended for talking about one of Trump's kids. The right move, enforce decency?</s>CARTER: Totally. That was an outrageous thing. You never take on the kid. It's a ten-year-old kid. You don't ever take that -- it's always been a rule. It was absolutely -- a juvenile like that.</s>CAMEROTA: Bill Carter, thank you. Great to talk to you.</s>CARTER: Good to be with you.</s>CUOMO: And thanks to our international viewers for watching. CNN "NEWSROOM" begins for you in moments. But for our U.S. viewers, NEW DAY continues right now.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Great thing for the American worker what we just did.</s>KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP ADVISOR: If anybody can achieve that, it's President Trump.</s>TRUMP: I'm talking about no tax, because if you stay here, there's no tax.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He didn't change his point of view on the crowd size.</s>SPICER: I believe that we have to be honest with the American people.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The president reiterated illegal ballot costs him the popular vote.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not an alternative fact. It's just a falsehood.</s>SPICER: It's time for Senate Democrats to stop playing political games.</s>MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's my privilege to welcome Mike Pompeo as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Investigators are scrutinizing phone calls between Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the</s>U.S. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At least one of the calls came on the same day that the Obama administration announced sanctions on Russia.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.</s>CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY.