White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer became cross with NBC reporter Hallie Jackson on Wednesday over the results of the Georgia congressional race, saying it was a clear loss for the Democratic Party and the media reaction to the result was misleading.
Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff was flooded with out-of-state liberal money in the crowded race to replace former congressman Tom Price, but he did not reach the 50 percent threshold on Tuesday night necessary to clinch victory, sending him to a runoff on June 20 with Republican Karen Handel.
Jackson asked Spicer if President Trump, who tweeted attacks against Ossoff leading up to the election, would campaign with Handel. After Spicer said it was unclear, Jackson asked him if Trump was spending "too much political capital on a race Republicans should be winning easily."
Spicer paused before answering and sounded irritated.
"It's interesting. I thought some of the coverage was a little intriguing as I watched it," Spicer said. "The Democrats went all in on this race. They spent $8.3 million. They said on the record that their goal was to win this race. They lost, and the reaction has somewhat been that they almost won. No, they lost."
He added that Democrats threw the "kitchen sink" into winning the race and lost. When Jackson said there were still two months until the final election, Spicer said it was not the stated goal of the Democrats to go to a runoff.
"They didn't run for a runoff. They ran to win last night and they lost," Spicer said. "And so anything short of describing that as a loss is sort of inconceivable to me in the sense that that's literally what they said their goal was to do ... They came up short, and so it's a loss."