White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer
Donald Trump has launched his presidency with a declaration of war on the media and further brazen assaults on truth.
In an interview with NBC News program Meet the Press on Sunday, senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway defended a press statement by new White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
"You're saying it's a falsehood ... Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that", Conway told NBC.
Spicer used his first press conference with the White House press corps to launch an extraordinary attack against media coverage of the inauguration ceremony. He read a statement condemning journalists who reported how much smaller the crowd was at Trump's inauguration compared with President Obama's in 2009.
Spicer's statement has been criticised for its own factual inaccuracies in a New York Times article.