{"id":117734,"date":"2017-09-14T02:05:44","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T06:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=117734"},"modified":"2017-09-14T02:05:44","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T06:05:44","slug":"sean-spicer-pressed-gently-as-jimmy-kimmel-live-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/09\/14\/sean-spicer-pressed-gently-as-jimmy-kimmel-live-guest\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Spicer pressed (gently) as ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ guest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"White<\/a>
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s Twitter profile picture, as of March 2017. “PressSec” is the official Twitter account for the White House Press Secretary. (Photo By United States Government – White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s Twitter profile picture, as of March 2017. “PressSec” is the official Twitter account for the White House Press Secretary. Official White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s Twitter Account, Public Domai<\/a>n)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK — It was a different Sean Spicer who paid a visit to ABC’s \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live\u201d Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

This was a smiling, chill Spicer, in marked contrast to the six hot-tempered months he spent as White House Press Secretary, conducting volatile news conferences that were given added heat thanks to Melissa McCarthy’s unsparing impersonation of him on \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Spicer’s first television appearance since resigning from the Trump Administration in July from what Kimmel joked was his hit reality show, \u201cI’m the Press Secretary — Get Me Out of Here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took Kimmel’s ribbing in much better spirits than the grilling the White House press corps dished out.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these members of the press were your friends, right?\u201d Kimmel asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWERE, yeah,\u201d replied Spicer, chuckling.<\/p>\n

Kimmel reminded him of how his tenure began: awkwardly backing up Republican President Donald Trump’s claim that his inauguration crowd was the biggest ever, when photographic evidence proved otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is he so concerned with size?\u201d asked Kimmel. \u201cHave you ever seen the president naked?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have not,\u201d Spicer replied good-naturedly.<\/p>\n

But even if Spicer knew Trump’s crowd wasn’t larger, Kimmel pressed on, his job as press secretary obliged him to say that it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour job as press secretary is to represent the president’s voice,\u201d Spicer explained. \u201cWhether you agree or not is not your job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you have to march out there and go, ‘He had a bigger crowd, everybody,\u201d’ Kimmel laughed.<\/p>\n

At Kimmel’s urging, Spicer tried to account for the tension that prevailed between him and the press corps.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of us who worked very hard to get (Trump) elected felt as though a lot of folks, in the media particularly, constantly sought to undermine the validity of that election,\u201d Spicer said. \u201cSo you to have to understand it sometimes from that perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Kimmel thought Spicer would dish dirt on Trump, he was disappointed.<\/p>\n

\u201cSean, you don’t work there anymore,\u201d Kimmel jokingly egged him on. \u201cYou don’t have to worry about him. We can protect you here.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Spicer remained resolute in his defence of Trump, declaring at one point, \u201cHe’s a good man that really cares about this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, Spicer did acknowledge that the relationship between the press and the White House could stand some improvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there’s a time when we can start taking down the temperature and get back to a more civil and constructive dialogue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To that Kimmel fired back, \u201cYou mean when Mike Pence takes over?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK — It was a different Sean Spicer who paid a visit to ABC’s \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live\u201d Wednesday night. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":117736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106,483],"tags":[23865,14224],"class_list":["post-117734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","category-politics","tag-jimmy-kimmel-live","tag-sean-spicer","mauthors-frazier-moore","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}