A former Trump-era White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, complained that reporters in the Washington DC press corps intentionally treated him worse than the current White House press secretary, Jen Psaki.
“I walked into the lion’s den every day – she walks into a bunch of kittens,” Spicer told The New York Times.
According to an extensive profile in the outlet dedicated to Psaki, correspondents disagree with Spicer's self-evaluation.
Spicer also suggested that Psaki "question[ed] my qualifications and services" to the United States. "Once she did that, the gloves were off,” he told The NYT, referring, apparently, to Psaki's response about why Trump appointees were asked to resign from the board of the United States Military Academy (Spicer among them).
“I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified", Psaki said when questioned on the matter.
The New York Times pointed at Psaki's comment on one of Spicer's more unfortunate moments during his brief tenure as White House press secretary, when he happened to refer to Nazi death camps as “Holocaust centres".
"It’s a really tough job, everybody screws up", Psaki said back at the time when speaking to CNN. "He apologized. You know, whether he -- if he didn't know the history, that's perhaps his own thing that should be concerning, maybe he needs to spend more time in history books."
Spicer, the first of four Trump press secretaries, assumed his position in January 2017. However, he did not get along well with the press, and his misfortunes began one day after Trump was inaugurated. On 21 January, Spicer claimed that the crowd at the inauguration was much larger than the media had reported, prompting mockery in the press and online.
Shortly after the controversial statement, Trump aide Kellyanne Conway anointed Spicer's view of the inauguration ceremony as "alternative facts". Spicer stepped down as press secretary in July 2017, serving just six months.
Spicer is not the only White House press secretary who voiced unhappiness with his version of events, as similar complaints about the treatment of Trump appointees were made by Kayleigh McEnany, Trump's last press secretary.
"Instead of the glowing profiles, there were hit pieces repeatedly, time and time again. It's just so sad that you have a fawning press corps like this, a fawning media sycophantically covering members of the Biden administration", McEnany lamented, in June noting that Psaki agreed to a photoshoot for a high-profile story in Vogue.