Andrea Mitchell: Sean Spicer First Press Briefing Was ‘Substantive’ and ‘Responsive’

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell praised Sean Spicer's first full press White House press conference Monday, calling it "substantive" and "responsive."

Here's a transcript:

SNOW: “Good afternoon. You have been watching a rather lengthy White House briefing, the very first full briefing, press briefing, from the press room there at the White House with Sean Spicer, the new press secretary for President Donald Trump. NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell has been watching along with us as well. Andrea, having covered the White house, and you have, too, that was a long press briefing. We don’t often take the entire thing here on MSNBC but we felt today that everybody was focused on this. Give me some of your headlines.”
MITCHELL: “First of all, he came out with a joke, with a light-hearted reference to the fact that Josh Earnest would still be the most popular, that his record of popularity would stand, that he messaged him last night. He attempted to fix — I think it was a reboot, you know, a chance to start over, frankly, a do-over. And it was substantive. It was responsive. He took lots of questions. He said that he intended to tell the truth, which is an important line to draw, saying that they may occasionally come out in haste and answer things incorrectly and have to fix it, but that he is dedicated to telling the truth. That was an important question that had been raised by his performance on Saturday and of course, by what Kellyanne Conway said to Chuck Todd on ‘Meet the Press’ when she, you know, talked about alternative facts. Also, there were a couple of things that were important and have to be followed up. He was trying to answer in a large sense, in a broad sense, that we’ll always work with Russia or anyone else who wants to attack ISIS, but, in fact, the report that came from Russian media that the U.S. and Russia were now in joint air strikes bombing ISIS targets, allegedly ISIS targets in Syria, would be breathtakingly new policy because the outgoing administration had condemned the Russian civilian bombings, in fact, in the most brutal and, you know, demonstrative terms, describing them, in effect, as war crimes. There was an immediate denial from the field from an officer in the field for the coalition, saying that that was Russian propaganda, so that needs to be followed up and fixed in particular.”