Sean Spicer said Thursday a CNN reporter owes President-elect Donald Trump an apology following his first press conference Wednesday where he interrupted Trump.
During a Thursday interview on “Fox & Friends,” the incoming press secretary for the Trump administration said CNN’s Jim Acosta has a “false recollection of the facts” regarding what happened between the two men after the press conference. (RELATED: The Media Is Outraged That Trump Criticized CNN. They Must Have Forgotten When Obama Did The Same To Fox News.)
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“[Acosta] verbally went after the president of the United States, was aggressive with him, inappropriate, rude, disrespectful to say the least,” Spicer responded. “He shouted down over Mara Liasson, a well-respected long time journalist who was asking a question.”
“After the press conference I went up to him and said that his behavior was unbecoming, disrespectful, inappropriate, rude and unbecoming of someone addressing the president or president-elect of the United States, and that if it happened again in the future yes, I would remove him, ” he added. “But the idea that I shouted or tried to remove him during a press conference is just patently false.”
“I think he owes an apology to the president-elect, to his fellow members of the press corps and especially to Mara Liasson who was doing her job to ask a question in a respectful, a polite manner,” he continued.
“The idea that he somehow feels entitled to ask a question is a bit preposterous. It is disrespectful rude, childish and unacceptable for anybody to treat the president-elect. But the idea that he feels entitled to and acts in a way that’s unbecoming frankly doesn’t respect the press corps respectfully and I know that many journalists feel the same way.”