Tag Archives: spicer

Chart of the Day: The Sean Spicer Show

by AWJCheri40066421 Posted on May 30, 2017

Mother Jones

Here’s a fun chart from Media Matters:

(Note: I have switched the colors in the graph to the correct red-state-blue-state representation.)

The remarkable thing here is not that President Obama’s press secretary was televised so little. That’s normal. The remarkable thing is that President Trump’s press secretary is televised so much. This is, pretty obviously, not because Spicer is singularly transparent and produces loads of news. It’s because the guy is a train wreck and we can’t look away.

But here’s a question: the standard excuse for this is that Spicer gets great ratings. But does he? I know he did in his first few weeks, but are his ratings still higher than ordinary news? I can’t seem to find any evidence one way or another.

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Chart of the Day: The Sean Spicer Show

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Here’s the Biggest Lie Sean Spicer Told Today

by MagnoliFIHM Posted on March 30, 2017

Mother Jones

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While chastising Democrats for threatening to filibuster Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday delivered one of his most egregious falsehoods yet. Republicans, he insisted, have historically been cooperative when it comes to giving up-or-down votes to Democratic presidents’ court appointments. Spicer specifically mentioned former President Barack Obama in making this assertion.

“Republicans in the past have allowed Democrat presidents to have their SCOTUS nominees voted on up or down,” Spicer said. “And for the most part, when you go back through President Obama or President Clinton…Republicans have joined with Democrats to allow people who are qualified to go onto the court.”

“It was Obama’s nominees that got through—all with Republican support,” he added. “It’s difficult to understand why, when you’ve got someone as eminently qualified as Gursuch, that this the stake that they want to drive. And I think it further sets a partisan divide in our country when we can’t allow people who are qualified, and universally so, to get on the bench.”

There’s one glaring problem with Spicer’s remarks: Merrick Garland. In 2016, Obama selected Garland to replace the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February. Arguing the nomination to fill the vacant seat should be left to the next president, Republicans staged an unprecedented blockade to the nomination process, refusing to even hold hearings on Garland’s nomination. That gamble paid off, and here we are with Trump and Gorsuch—and Spicer’s bald-faced lie.

Watch Spicer’s remarks, which start around the 1 hour and 49 minute mark:

Continued – 

Here’s the Biggest Lie Sean Spicer Told Today

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There Is No Pivot. There Will Never Be a Pivot.

by MazieCarmona Posted on March 19, 2017

Mother Jones

Another week, another pivot gone awry:

For Mr. Trump, this was supposed to be a week of pivoting and message discipline. The president read from a script during public appearances and posted on Twitter less often. He invited lawmakers from both parties to the White House for strategy sessions on the health measure. He scheduled policy speeches, like one near Detroit, where he announced that he was halting fuel economy standards imposed by Mr. Obama.

….But by Friday, as Mr. Trump worked to call attention to his powers of persuasion in securing commitments from a dozen wavering Republicans to back the health measure, the White House was left frantically trying to explain why Mr. Spicer had repeated allegations that the Government Communications Headquarters, the British spy agency, had helped to eavesdrop on the president during the campaign.

There’s a piece of me that hardly blames reporters for replaying the “pivot” narrative over and over. Let’s face it: It defies human understanding that an easily bored 8-year-old has been elected president of the United States. But he has—and every week he promises to be good. Maybe he even tries. Who knows?

For something like 50 or 60 consecutive weeks, the Trump entourage has been insisting that the boss is going to pivot and start being presidential real soon now. How long before everyone understands it’s not going to happen?

We have 3.8 years of this acting out left. It’s time for everyone to give up on the fantasy that Trump is going to turn into an adult someday.

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There Is No Pivot. There Will Never Be a Pivot.

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The Question the White House Won’t Answer: Did Trump’s Campaign Have Contact With Russia?

by cheriehatten008 Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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The first question at White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s daily briefing on Tuesday—half a day after the news broke that national security adviser Michael Flynn had resigned—focused on a key issue: Flynn’s contacts with the Vladimir Putin regime during the campaign. Flynn has been under fire for his post-election conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, during which he discussed the sanctions President Barack Obama was imposing on Russia as punishment for Moscow’s meddling in the US election. But ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked whether any Trump associates were in touch with the Russian government before the election.

This is important, for that would mean that Trump folks were in contact with the Putin regime while it was attacking American democracy. Trump and his team have adamantly denied there were any interactions with Russian officials. At a press conference in mid-January, Trump ignored a question about such contacts. Once the event was over, he said, “No contact.” Days later, on Face the Nation, incoming Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump campaign had no interactions with Moscow. Host John Dickerson asked him, “Did any adviser or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence declared, “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”

Yet the Washington Post reported days ago that Kislyak told the newspaper he had been in touch with Flynn since before the election. The ambassador declined to say what he and Flynn had discussed. And the newspaper reported that the Flynn-Kislyak conversations “were part of a series of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that began before the Nov. 8 election and continued during the transition, officials said.” These facts and Kislyak’s comment undercut Trump’s and Pence’s assertions there were no pre-election contacts.

So what was Spicer to say when Karl posed this query? At first, Spicer said that Flynn did speak to the Russian ambassador during the transition. No, Karl protested, that’s not the question. What about before the election? Spicer then sputtered out this reply: “There’s nothing that would conclude me that anything different has changed with respect to that time period.”

That contorted reply would seem to mean that the White House is sticking to its previous denial. But this assertion runs contrary to what is now the public record: that the Trump campaign was in contact with Putin’s man in Washington while Putin was subverting an American election to help Trump. What was going on? What was said? What messages did Flynn send to the Putin regime? These are the obvious questions that warrant answers. They are also dangerous questions for Trump. And that’s why Spicer cannot acknowledge the hard truth that the Flynn scandal started before the election. These contacts deserve as much, if not more, attention than the conversations that triggered this controversy, for they are relevant to the fundamental subject at hand: Trump’s relationship with the autocratic leader who mounted an operation to subvert American democracy to assist Trump.

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The Question the White House Won’t Answer: Did Trump’s Campaign Have Contact With Russia?

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Spicer Is Spinning Flynngate As a "Matter of Trust, Pure and Simple"

by MaiDuggan290 Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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From the White House briefing room:

The answer turns out to be January 26. That’s three weeks ago.

Spicer is insisting that Trump fired Flynn due to an “erosion” of trust. “It was a matter of trust, pure and simple,” he’s said over and over. And yet, oddly enough, Trump’s trust in Flynn didn’t crater when he was told about Flynn’s lies. It apparently cratered only after the Washington Post made Flynn’s lies public. Funny that.

Now Spicer is trying to blame the Obama Justice Department for withholding its information about Flynn for 13 days. Nice try, Sean.

Oh, and Spicer says the real story here is all the leaks. Sure, Flynn is a story, but the press should consider the source. They should investigate that. Oddly, back when all those hacked Russian emails were gnawing away at Hillary Clinton’s campaign, nobody on the right thought that was an issue. All that mattered was that this information was becoming public. I guess that’s no longer operative.

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Spicer Is Spinning Flynngate As a "Matter of Trust, Pure and Simple"

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Sean Spicer Imagines Coretta Scott King Would Change Her Mind About Jeff Sessions

by KOPManuela Posted on February 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Amid mounting outrage over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as she read Coretta Scott King’s 1968 letter opposing the appointment of Sen. Jeff Sessions’ to the federal bench, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday said he “respectfully disagreed” with the assessment by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow that Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general, was a threat to civil rights.

“Like the late Arlen Specter,” Spicer said, “I can only hope that if she was still with us today, that after getting to know him and to see his record and his commitment to voting and civil rights,” she would have agreed with Specter when he said he regretted his vote to kill Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship decades before.

“I would hope that if she was still with us today,” Spicer continued, “she would share that sentiment.”

The remarks were swiftly mocked on social media, with many slamming Spicer for appearing to recast King’s views on civil rights and Sessions’ controversial record on the issue.

Warren was forced to stop reading from King’s letter, in which she accused Sessions of using his office to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens,” Tuesday night after McConnell invoked an arcane rule prohibiting senators from impugning one another. The incident sparked widespread protest among Democrats, who in turn used it as further evidence against President Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.

Spicer’s statement on King came shortly after he angrily defended the president’s anti-terror raid in Yemen in January in which civilians and a Navy SEAL were killed. He suggested anyone who questioned the success of the mission was doing a “disservice” to the Navy SEAL killed in the mission.

When asked if his comments included Sen. John McCain, who previously described the raid as a “failure,” Spicer replied that the message was for “anybody.”

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Sean Spicer Imagines Coretta Scott King Would Change Her Mind About Jeff Sessions

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Trump Team Still Doesn’t Seem to Understand They’re in the White House Now

by NatalieS20 Posted on January 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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I went to lunch, did a bit of shopping, and came home. Elapsed time: about 90 minutes. In that span:

President Trump endorsed a plan for a 20 percent tax on imports from all countries we’re running a trade deficit with.
Sean Spicer said Mexico’s portion of the tax would pay for the wall.
Spicer then said this wouldn’t raise prices for American consumers, though it quite plainly would.
Finally, a few minutes later, Spicer reversed himself and said the 20 percent tax is not a policy proposal after all, merely an example of how we might pay for the wall.

As of now, no one really knows what any of this means. The Trump team still doesn’t seem to get that they’re in the effing White House now. What they say matters. You don’t just toss out any random shit that comes to mind.

In the meantime, Steve Bannon took to the New York Times to up the ante on the White House war with the media:

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call. “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

….Mr. Bannon, who rarely grants interviews to journalists outside of Breitbart News, the provocative right-wing website he ran until last August, was echoing comments by Mr. Trump this weekend, when the president said he was in “a running war” with the media and called journalists “among the most dishonest people on earth.”

Actually, I think we all understand just fine why Donald Trump is president: because he ran a racist, boorish, epically mendacious campaign and Republicans all decided to go along with it. And even that wouldn’t have been enough if Trump hadn’t gotten some additional help from his pals James Comey and Vladimir Putin. In any case, to the extent that the media is dedicated to exposing lies and reporting the truth, it is indeed the opposition party to people like Bannon.

Then there’s this:

Finally, if you need a bit of levity to make up for all the rest of this, our friends at Public Policy Polling have released yet another of their entertaining trolls:

Then again, I suppose this isn’t really funny. Here’s my guess: despite more than a year of spittle-flecked fury at Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, most Trump voters probably don’t even know what a private server is. Nor do they care. It was just a buzzword that somehow meant Hillary was a crook.

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Trump Team Still Doesn’t Seem to Understand They’re in the White House Now

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What Does It Take for the Press to Call a Lie a Lie?

by Shenna1238 Posted on January 22, 2017

Mother Jones

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Watching the inauguration yesterday, I saw the smallish crowds just like everyone else. My immediate thought was: Oh God, this means tomorrow will be a 24/7 offensive from the White House about how this was the biggest inaugural crowd ever in history. The boy king will demand no less.

Sure enough, that’s what we got. Trump went out to visit the CIA today and informed everyone that the inauguration crowd was at least a million, maybe a million and a half. Then he sent out his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to deliver an unprecedented screed, yelling at the assembled reporters about how dishonest they were and then spewing out a whole array of fabricated numbers to back up his boss’s lies. When he was done, he turned on his heels and left without taking any questions.

I’m not interested in pointless discussions of whether Trump does this stuff to distract us (in this case, from the massive number of people at the women’s marches around the country). I suppose that’s part of it. But it’s obvious from decades of watching Trump that he simply can’t abide any criticism, either express or implied. Everything he does has to be the biggest and best. He’s incapable of not lashing out when anyone suggests otherwise.

That’s obvious enough to be banal at this point. What I’m more interested in is when the media is going to get over its faintheartedness and start calling this stuff what it is: lies. On MSNBC, Jim Sciutto reminded us that Trump frequently says things that “defy the facts.” CNN wrote about Spicer’s “misstatements of fact.” The New York Times said Trump’s crowd numbers were “false.” Other newspapers said the same thing in different ways.

But even by the strictest definition, Trump and Spicer were lying. Trump made up his numbers out of thin air, knowing perfectly well they were based on nothing. Spicer delivered a whole bunch of numbers that were obviously either invented or just plain fake—and did it in an angry tone that was clearly meant to intimidate everyone in the room.

All of this stuff was not just “false,” it was knowingly false. Everyone knows this. So let’s cut out the delicate language and the earnest panel discussions about whether Spicer might have a point about one thing or another. He was lying. Trump was lying. Can’t we be adults and just say so?

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What Does It Take for the Press to Call a Lie a Lie?

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