News publishers are being forced to reckon with a new media landscape dominated by Trump and his supporters, as the new White House press secretary has been forced to take to Twitter to defend himself against charges of bias.
John Kelly is a member of the White House staff.
He was confirmed as Mr Trump’s new press secretary earlier this month and is widely expected to be in charge of the new administration’s media strategy.
In his first public remarks since being confirmed, Mr Kelly told the Senate press gallery that his job was to tell the truth and defend the US.
“This job requires a certain amount of candour, it requires a willingness to look hard at things, and it requires people that have a good grasp of how we get things done,” he said.
“It is not a job that I am particularly well suited to do, but I do know that I have a great deal of respect for the people that I work for and that I believe in, so I do intend to do that.”
Mr Kelly said the White Street Journal, which has a long history of being critical of the president, would be an example of how he would approach his job.
“The White Street Journals is a newspaper that has been critical of our president, and that has to be done with the utmost respect,” he told senators.
“I am very confident that I will be able to continue to tell you that story.”
Mr Trump fired Mr Kelly as his chief of staff on Friday, just hours after the President’s first major address to a joint session of Congress, where he repeatedly blamed “fake news” and “fake media” for the president’s troubles.
“He is not only unfit to be the chief of the Department of Homeland Security, but he is unfit to serve as our commander-in-chief,” he declared in the speech.
Mr Kelly, who took his job from Mr Trump on Saturday, also took aim at the media’s coverage of the President and his first inauguration in January.
“You know what I will tell you, they did a great job, they wrote a great story, but they were wrong,” he argued.
“Fake news is fake news, the fake media is fake, and I am a winner.”
Mr Spicer was a White House spokesman for more than eight years and served as deputy press secretary to President Donald Trump.
He was the first White House spokesperson to be fired, after the inauguration, in 2021.
The president also fired his communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, on Monday.