Sean Spicer: Americans can trust President Trump 'if he's not joking'

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday the American people can trust Donald Trump's words "if he's not joking."

NBC's Peter Alexander pressed Spicer on whether or not Americans can trust the president, citing last week's jobs report and Trump's reaction, asking, "Can you say affirmatively that whenever the president says something, we can trust it to be real?"

"If he's not joking, of course," Spicer replied.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer

Trump has called previous jobs reports "phony" prior to winning the November election, but feels they are "very real now."

"You said, 'They may have been phony in the past but it's very real now,'" Alexander said, quoting Spicer's own words. "When should Americans trust the president? Should they trust the president, is it phony or real when he says President Obama was wiretapped?"

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"He doesn't really think that President Obama went up and tapped his phone personally, but I think there's no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election," Spicer responded. "That is a widely reported activity that occurred back then."

"The president used the word 'wiretap' in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities during that," Spicer said.

The exchange between Alexander and Spicer went on for nearly five minutes, with Spicer also noting that the president still believes 3 million people voted illegally in the November election.