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Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer faced plenty of questions in his first public appearance since leaving his position with the Trump administration.
It was Mr Spicer's first television appearance since resigning from the Trump Administration in July from what Kimmel joked was his hit reality show, "I'm the Press Secretary — Get Me Out of Here."
Mr Spicer's chill demeanour was a marked contrast to the six hot-tempered months he spent conducting volatile news conferences that were given added heat thanks to Melissa McCarthy's unsparing impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live.
Though not strictly part of Mr Spicer's greatest hits, McCarthy's beloved spoofs of the press secretary became synonymous with his tumultuous tenure and scored the actress an Emmy earlier this week.
McCarthy — made up to look like Mr Spicer — used SNL's mock up of the White House briefing room to holler her way through faux press conferences and unleash on the media.
After tendering his resignation, Mr Spicer told Fox News a lot of the SNL skits were "over the line, it wasn't funny".
But he has since changed his stance on the issue, conceding "it was kinda funny", as Kimmel rolled a clip of McCarthy's impersonation.
"That cost me a lot of money in therapy," he joked.
"I don't think [US President Donald Trump] found as much humour in it as others."
He took Kimmel's ribbing in much better spirits than the grilling the White House press corps dished out.
"A lot of these members of the press were your friends, right?" Kimmel asked.
"WERE, yeah," Mr Spicer replied, chuckling.
'Have you seen the President naked?'
Kimmel reminded Mr Spicer of how his tenure began: awkwardly backing up Mr Trump's claim his inauguration crowd was the biggest ever, when photographic evidence proved otherwise.
"Why is he so concerned with size?" Kimmel asked. "Have you ever seen the President naked?"
"I have not," Mr Spicer replied good-naturedly.
But even if Mr Spicer knew Mr Trump's crowd wasn't larger, Kimmel pressed on, his job as press secretary obliged him to say that it was.
"Your job as press secretary is to represent the President's voice. Whether you agree or not is not your job," Mr Spicer said.
"And then you have to march out there and go, 'He had a bigger crowd, everybody,'" Kimmel laughed.
At Kimmel's urging, Mr Spicer tried to account for the tension that prevailed between him and the press corps.
"Some of us who worked very hard to get [Mr Trump] elected felt as though a lot of folks, in the media particularly, constantly sought to undermine the validity of that election," Mr Spicer said.
"So you to have to understand it sometimes from that perspective."
Trump is 'a good man', Spicer says
If Kimmel thought Mr Spicer would dish dirt on Mr Trump, he was disappointed.
"Sean, you don't work there anymore," Kimmel jokingly egged him on. "You don't have to worry about him. We can protect you here."
But Mr Spicer remained resolute in his defence of Mr Trump, declaring at one point: "He's a good man that really cares about this country."
Even so, Mr Spicer did acknowledge the relationship between the press and the White House could stand some improvement.
"I think there's a time when we can start taking down the temperature and get back to a more civil and constructive dialogue," he said.
To that Kimmel fired back: "You mean when Mike Pence takes over?"
AP/ABC
Topics: donald-trump, world-politics, arts-and-entertainment, united-states
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