MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski questioned on Monday whether President Trump's administration was "trying to create a dictatorship" after reportedly banning multiple media outlets last Friday from a press gaggle.
Brzezinski played a clip of White House press secretary Sean Spicer in December talking about the importance of the media.
"We have a respect for the press, when it comes to the government that that is something you can't ban an entity from. Conservative, liberal, or otherwise, I think that's what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship," Spicer said.
After Brzezinski played the clip, she sat in silence and rolled her eyes back and forth as she reflected on the video clip.
"I mean, so, is that we're at? Anybody want to participate? I mean he just described himself," Brzezinski said.
"Seventy days may be a long time in his mind. It was seventy days ago," former Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (Tenn.) said.
"Are they trying to create a dictatorship? I'm not joking and I'm not angry," Brzezinski said.
Brzezinski's comments came after CNN, Politico, the LA Times, BuzzFeed, and the New York Times were all reportedly banned from attending Friday's White House gaggle.
The White House pushed back against this claim, including Spicer, who called it "completely ridiculous."
Fox News anchor Judge Jeanine Pirro asked Spicer about the media reports and why some of the media outlets were not part of the press pool.
"They were not part of the pool," Spicer said of the excluded news organizations. "That's what they don't want to tell you."
"So the fact of the matter is that the Associated Press, the wires and a couple of the other papers were part of the pool. They came and we expanded the pool to allow some additional outlets to come into the gaggle, and I think any assertion that they were banned or whatever is completely ridiculous," Spicer said.
Spicer also added that the press pool is set up each day by the White House Correspondents Association.
"They tell us who's in the pool; we don't tell them," Spicer added.