NBC News openly doubts Trump’s words at White House

Reporters from NBC grilled White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday over whether the broader American public can take President Trump at his word, following a series of vague tweets and contradictory statements from the Trump administration.

The two reporters confronted Spicer during Monday’s briefing about the president’s feelings toward government-provided data and his recent tweets about the previous administration’s alleged surveillance of his campaign associates.

“When should Americans trust the president?” NBC’s Peter Alexander asked Spicer during an exchange about the latest jobs report.

The White House had celebrated new employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, marking a departure from Trump’s criticism of jobs data in the past.

“Should [Americans] trust the president — is it phony or real — when he says that President Obama was wiretapping?” Alexander asked Spicer on Monday, seemingly mocking the comment Trump’s press secretary had made a week prior.

“On the Congressional Budget Office report, does the president think it was real now and is phony now?” Alexander continued. “When [Trump] says something, can we trust that it’s real, or should we assume that it’s phony?”

“Yes … you should trust that it’s real, absolutely,” Spicer shot back. “Every time he speaks authoritatively … that he speaks, he’s speaking as the president of the United States.”

A similar exchanged played out minutes later when NBC News’ Hallie Jackson asked Spicer whether Trump’s tweets are to be taken at face value.

“When do you decide when a president’s tweets, when his words are open to interpretation, and when those words stand on their own,” the reporter asked, noting that Spicer had said Trump meant the previous administration was surveilling his campaign in one way or another when he accused Obama of “wiretapping” his aides.

“The president used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities,” Spicer said, a week after telling reporters that the same tweet “stands for itself.”

Both exchanges came just days after NBC’s Chris Jansing asked the top Trump spokesman if the president “has a credibility issue” because he had misstated in a tweet the number of Guantanamo Bay detainees Obama released during his time in office.