White House press secretary Sean Spicer was caught in a candid moment by a woman who peppered him with harassing, rapid-fire questions while he tried to make a purchase at an Apple Store over the weekend.

Shree Chauhan saw Spicer in the Washington DC store on Saturday (11 March) while waiting to get her shattered iPhone screen fixed. "I looked up to see Sean Spicer. I Googled him to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me," she wrote in a blog post on Sunday. "I realized what an enormous opportunity it was to get answers without the protections normally given to Mr Spicer."

Every weekday, Spicer provides a daily briefing to the White House press pool. His occasionally aggressive non-answers to questions even sparked a Saturday Night Live spoof. In it Spicer is played by comedian Melissa McCarthy who insults and fights reporters who ask uncomfortable questions of the Trump administration.

"I was honestly quite nervous and wanted to come up with more cogent questions but did not have time to do so," wrote Chuahan, who livestreamed the footage of their encounter.

Laying into Spicer she demanded to know if he had "committed treason, too, just like the president".

"What can you tell me about Russia? You know you work for a fascist, right? How do you feel about that? How do you feel about destroying our country, Sean? Do you feel good about the decisions you're making? Do you feel good about lying to the American people?" Chuahan asks in the video.

"Such a great country that allows you to be here," Spicer said in response to her rapid questioning, otherwise making no effort to interact with her and making moves to remove himself from the awkward the situation. It's not clear what Spicer meant by his comment.

Having lived in Washington DC for at least a decade, Chuahan said she knows it's "customary to give public figures their space". But she couldn't pass up the opportunity "given what Mr Spicer and his boss are doing to this country," she wrote on her blog post.

In her post she writes that she knew President Donald Trump would be "dangerous for America" and that "his views on people of colour, immigrants and Muslims are abhorrent".

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Sean Spicer was shopping in an Apple store in Washington DC when he was confronted REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst