White House press secretary Sean Spicer has become incensed at a press briefing after a journalist asked him when the media would be able to trust US President Donald Trump.
NBC reporter Peter Alexander drew the ire of Mr Spicer at a recent White House media conference when, after asking about Mr Trump's wiretapping claims and his administration's new healthcare act, he questioned whether he and other journalists could have faith in the President's statements.
Mr Alexander's questions came after a report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that 14 million fewer people will have access to health insurance under Mr Trump's American Health Care Act than they did under Obamacare.
"Can you say affrontively that when the President says something, we can trust it to be real?" he asked.
"If he's not joking, of course," Mr Spicer replied, to scornful laughter from the press corps gathered in the briefing room. "Every time he speaks, he's speaking as President of the United States."
When asked if Mr Trump was joking when he claimed 3 million people voted illegally, Mr Spicer said he wasn't, and that Mr Trump still very much believed that to be true.
It didn't take long before he was again ready to go to battle with Mr Alexander's, after the reporter suggested President Trump had made unsubstantiated claims about unemployment rates.
"On Friday, the President said the [CBO's] numbers were phony then, but very real now - so how can we trust anything he says, [and trust] that he won't later say, 'It was the opposite'?" Mr Alexander asked.
Mr Spicer responded angrily, saying the reason Mr Trump's statistics about job creation had changed in the past was because the numbers "fluctuate based on how people calculate who's in the workforce".
"The percentage of people who are unemployed varies widely by who you're asking and the way you do the analysis," he said, before explaining that it was the Trump administration's view that the CBO had no validity.
"In 2013, the CBO estimated that 24 million people would have coverage under Obamacare in 2016. They were way off by 13 million people - over 50 percent. In fact, only 10.4 million people are actually covered. Reports now say that number has dwindled down to 9 million," he said.
"The CBO coverage estimates are consistently wrong and more importantly, did not take into consideration the comprehensive nature of the three-prong plan to repeal and replace Obamacare with the American Health Care Act. We're working to bring real relief and better choices to the American family."
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