Sean Spicer made fun of himself during his surprise appearance at the Emmys Sunday night, but the sketch invoked a moment during his tenure as White House Press Secretary that he says he now regrets.
“Of course I do, absolutely,” Spicer told New York Times reporters Monday morning when asked if he regretted berating reporters over accurate accounts of Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd sizes compared to that of Barack Obama’s.
Spicer was also asked if he was worried that Trump would be angry at his parody. “I certainly hope not,” he replied. “This was an attempt to poke a little fun at myself and add a little bit of levity to the event.”
Spicer’s Emmys appearance was shrouded in secrecy leading up to the awards show. He rolled onto the stage at the end of Stephen Colbert’s opening monologue in a nod to Melissa McCarthy’s parody on “Saturday Night Live,” and repeated the phrase he told reporters after Trump’s inauguration.
“This will be the largest audience to witness an Emmys. Period! Both in person and around the world,” he told the crowd at the Microsoft Theater in downtown Los Angeles Sunday night. He subbed out one word from the original — adding “Emmys” instead of “inauguration.”
While the crowd at the Emmys loved the surprise appearance, members of the media haven’t been so happy, criticizing Hollywood for inviting a former member of the Trump administration who they say spread dishonesty to the American people.
On his first day as president, Trump slammed the media for underestimating the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration. Spicer backed the president at the time, saying Trump had attracted “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” which photographs of the event proved false.