Sean Spicer took the first questions of his term as President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary at a press briefing on Monday.
The affair had its moments of contention, but it was both more civil and more reminiscent of White House press conferences past than Saturday night's slugfest, when Spicer offered a five-minute statement to blast the press' inauguration coverage (and tell numerous untruths) and then left without taking questions.
Spicer’s press conference lasted nearly 80 minutes as he took questions from about 40 different reporters. Here were the first 10 questions.*
1) Daniel Halper, New York Post: When will you guys commence the building of the border of the border wall? Are you guys enforcing the [Obamacare individual insurance] mandate or not?
2) Jennifer Wishon, Christian Broadcasting Network: Of all the policy actions that the president could have taken, [he] chose to reinstate the Mexico City policy [banning U.S. funding for groups that provide abortions overseas]. What message is he sending here? Does he see the elimination or reduction of abortions as American value? And also, here at home, can pro-life Americans expect him to put his signature on legislation that will defund Planned Parenthood.
3) Janet Rodriguez, Univision: What does this president mean to say he will work through Congress to get a special something — we don’t know what it is — for DACA recipients, (those undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and are now partially shielded from deportation via former President Barack Obama’s executive order). And when can expect that to happen? And when can we expect the White House Spanish site to be back up?
4) Blake Berman, Fox Business: The president campaign on the corporate tax rate of 15 percent, and today when he met with the business leaders he had mentioned that the tax rate would drop to somewhere to between 15 and 20 percent. Is he moving the goalposts there in any way? On government spending, there have been reports that you might be looking at $10 trillion over the course of 10 years? Is that accurate? And would you be willing to wrap up entitlements to get there?
5) April Ryan, American Urban Radio Networks: Elijah Cummings, a Democratic Maryland Congressman, confirmed that the president talked to him about the high price of prescription drugs. When is this meeting going to be set, or is it coming up soon? And will the president be meeting with the full of the Congressional Black Caucus as well as the Hispanic Caucus on issues related to those communities?
With the numbers that you talked about and that has been in the news and the numbers Saturday (at anti-Trump protests), do you believe that you have the mandate to be able to be able to push through — you had talked through about replacing the portion of Obamacare that [subsidizes low-income health care]?
6) Julie Pace, Associated Press: There’s some discrepancy between what the Russians are saying and what the Pentagon is saying in terms of some potential joint action? Can you clarify that? And generally, is the president open to joint action in Syria with the Russians?
(In a follow-up, Pace asked Spicer to clarify Trump’s comments Saturday at the CIA about how the U.S. should have taken oil from Iraq in the aftermath of the second Iraq war.)
7) John Roberts, Fox News: Does the president plan to take action to greenlight the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines? And on T.P.P., John McCain says it was a serious mistake to do what the president did for America’s economy and for its strategic position in the Asian Pacific. Why was TPP the right thing to do?
(Eds note: Trump signed an executive order Monday withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.)
8) Jonathan Karl, ABC: Is it your intention to always tell the truth from that podium? And will you pledge never to knowingly say something that is not factual? Do you have any corrections that you would like to make about what you said Saturday? Take one, the issue of metro ridership you made a statement that was not accurate? Do you stand by your statement that that was the most-watched inaugural?
9) (Unidentified): What is the U.S. strategic interest in moving the U.S. embassy from moving Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem? And also, in the chat with [Egyptian President Abel Fatah] al-Sisi today, was the subject of the Muslim Brotherhood discussed?
10) John [inaudible], BBC: [British Prime Minister Theresa May visits Trump Friday.] Is there going to be a joint news conference and is Donald Trump going to get a state visit back to the U.K. later in the year?
* We’ll update as we make our way through the video, and we apologize to those correspondents we were unable to identify.