White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended his use of so-called "alternative facts" in an interview Tuesday, claiming that differing inauguration attendance estimates cited by the media and President Donald Trump's camp were similar to two news stations sharing different weather reports.
"It's not alternative facts," Spicer said in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity. "It's that there's sometimes, you can watch two different stations and get two different weather reports. That doesn't mean that the station was lying to you."
He stood by a claim he made during a tense news briefing Saturday that Trump's inauguration drew record-breaking crowds, despite photographic evidence to the contrary. He did not provide additional evidence.
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"We weren't by any means trying to mislead anyone," he said Tuesday. "The press was trying to make (it) seem like … we were ignoring the facts."
Instead, he insisted it was the media that had the wrong facts.
"We were right," he said. "If you add up the number of people who watched (the inauguration) online, on Twitter, Twitter Live, Facebook Live, on YouTube – it broke all sorts of records."
Multiple fact-checking groups have rated Spicer's claim anywhere from unprovable to outright false. Politifact gave his claim a "Pants on Fire" rating, the category used by the group to single out what it determines to be the most flagrant lies.
Spicer's comments came two days after White House counselor Kellyanne Conway came to his defense during an interview Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press." She admonished host Chuck Todd for being "overly dramatic" about critics who claim Spicer outright lied to the media during his first official briefing.
"You're saying it's a falsehood," she said. "Our press secretary gave alternative facts to that."
The comment was widely lambasted.
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