Sean Spicer is very Sorry about his Holocaust Comments
Spicer gets in the most trouble when he follows his boss’s thinking most closely—and things just get worse when he tries to pull in history, or facts, to justify the route that Trump has taken him on.
.. Indeed, before Spicer began comparing Assad to Hitler, it sounded as if he might be coming dangerously close to comparing footage of sarin-gas-attack victims to the cell-phone video, at which he had earlier expressed horror, of a passenger being removed from a United flight.
.. Then someone asked why Spicer thought any of that would lead Vladimir Putin to abandon Syria, Russia’s longtime ally, and that’s when Spicer’s difficulties really escalated. Looking for clarity, he turned to Hitler.
.. For Spicer to revert, as a default, to such terms in explaining why Assad is worse than Hitler suggests that he—and, it is a safe guess, others in the White House—are either not registering the implications of what their boss is saying or are doing so all too well.
.. President Trump has given an important job to a person not competent to carry it out. This is not a problem confined to Spicer; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has also been entrusted with crucial tasks far beyond his experience. They are all playing with fire. Then again, in the Trump Administration, what would competent communications looks like?
.. President Trump has given an important job to a person not competent to carry it out. This is not a problem confined to Spicer; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has also been entrusted with crucial tasks far beyond his experience. They are all playing with fire. Then again, in the Trump Administration, what would competent communications looks like?
.. Trump had been tweeting belligerently, and the South Korean government had had to reassure its citizens that war wasn’t imminent. Spicer made a serious face. “We have a shared interest with China of making sure that we don’t have a nuclear North Korea,” he said.
“We do have a nuclear North Korea,” Van Susteren interrupted.
“No . . .”
“I mean, we do,” Van Susteren said, and began reeling off facts about that nation’s arsenal.
“They have, they have short- and medium-term miss—again, I’m not going to get into their nuclear capability,” Spicer said. Wasn’t that just what he’d done?