Since the advent of the position in 1932 under the Roosevelt administration, the White House press secretary has been the primary spokesperson for the executive branch of the government, according to the JFK Library. The press secretary is responsible for briefing the press corps on issues that concern the White House and also commenting on news stories.

The White House’s website states that after the President and the Vice-President, the press secretary is perhaps the most visible face of an administration. The role of the press secretary is to give briefings and statements that are broadcast on live television, during which he fields questions from reporters. These third-party questions, along with the live broadcast, force the press secretary to think on his feet and be ready for any question. In addition, the golden rule of the briefing room is that you must never lie. A press secretary may withhold information or spin stories, but he must never lie.

Of course, rules and precedents mean nothing in the Trump White House. The press secretary for the fledgling Trump administration is Sean Spicer, known to comedy shows like Saturday Night Live as “Spicey.” In his first briefings, Mr. Spicer has taken a hostile and combative tone with the press. In addition, Mr. Spicer has shown a surprising and disconcerting allergy to the truth.

From his very first appearance in the press room, Spicer has lied to the press. He began by making numerous false claims about the size of President Trump’s inauguration crowds. Then he lied about the use of floor coverings on the National Mall. He lied about metal detectors and magnetometers being used for security. He lied about crowd numbers. And, according to The Washington Post’s fact checker on January 22nd, he lied about D.C. Metro riders. All of these falsehoods were propagated by Spicer in a single angry briefing. Not only did the spokesperson for the White House blatantly lie to the American public in front of the presidential seal, but he and other administration officials have continued to defend and spin his remarks. Most notably, Trump’s senior advisor, Kellyanne Conway, characterized the falsehoods as “alternative facts” on NBC’s Meet the Press.

At a time when the United States is extremely polarized and everything from climate reports to mass shootings is politicized and spun, the only things that can be relied upon are facts and numbers. As the saying goes, “numbers never lie.” Certain pieces of data are considered true, and there is no getting around the truth. A killer blow in an argument is a credibly sourced number that cannot be denied. However, the Trump administration does not seem to accept truth as truth. They believe that it is easier to change facts and outright deny the truth than to simply accept facts and work them into policy. One such example is the unemployment rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the current unemployment rate is 4.8%. The Bureau of Donald Trump’s Imagination has stated, in a statement to Time magazine, that the unemployment rate is 42%. Donald Trump is contradicting accepted fact to the tune of 37% because he thinks that he can get away with it. He thinks that eventually the truth will no longer be truth, and the only “real news” will be his own fake numbers. The more that Sean Spicer and the President himself lie to the news, lie to the public, and lie to themselves, the more that facts are no longer simply facts, they are partisan arguments that can be changed, hidden, or fought over.            
It is one thing for the White House to lie to the American people, but it is quite another thing for the White House to rebrand the truth. There are things called facts. Some things are correct and some things are incorrect. More people were at Obama’s inauguration. More people rode the D.C. Metro on Obama’s inauguration. These are facts. According to Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer “gave alternative facts to that.” There are no alternative facts. If we let Trump and the White House decide what information is true and what is false, if we let Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway tell us that lies are simply different facts, if facts are politicized, the truth will no longer matter and our freedom will be jeopardized. This fate is unacceptable—a fact is a fact, and it must stay that way.