Americans should trust that President Trump’s statements are accurate — unless he makes them in jest, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday.
“If he’s not joking, of course” his claims are reliably true, Spicer said in response to questions about the veracity of the president’s recent statements on wiretapping and economic data.
Trump’s recent claim that job numbers during the Obama administration were “phony,” but that the encouraging jobs report made public last week was real, had sparked criticism from some who questioned why his faith in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report had changed. That report — the first of Trump’s presidency — showed the 235,000 new jobs created in February had exceeded expectations for economic growth.
“The percentage of people who are unemployed varies widely by who you’re asking and the way you do the analyses about who’s actually in the workforce,” Spicer said in defense of Trump’s past skepticism of job numbers.
Spicer defended the reliability of Trump’s claims more broadly amid scrutiny of his unsubstantiated claim, now more than nine days old, that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
“Every time that he speaks authoritatively, that he speaks, he’s speaking as president of the United States,” Spicer said.
The White House spokesman also dismissed questions about Trump’s controversial claims that widespread voter fraud may have occurred during the presidential election.
“He still believes that,” Spicer said. “He does believe it.”
