Major moments of Sean Spicer’s time as White House press secretary
CLOSE
Take a look at some of the former white House press secretary’s greatest hits.
Time
WASHINGTON — Sean Spicer on Friday joined the ever-growing list of officials to leave the Trump administration in its early days.
Spicer’s six-month career as White House press secretary was defined by his tenuous relationship with the press.
So, in chronological order, here are the big moments when Spicer himself became the story:
1. ‘Largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period.’
Within 24 hours of Inauguration Day, Spicer called in the media for an unplanned Saturday briefing — days before the first press conference was expected — to delivering a combative statement slamming the media for “deliberately false reporting” on the size of Trump’s inauguration crowds and fixtures of the Oval Office.
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe,” he said. “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”
This statement has since been proven to be inaccurate, something that Spicer acknowledged. His briefing inspired the meme #SpicerFacts. It also led to the infamous moment in which presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway said the White House had offered “alternative facts” about the crowd size.
Spicer also took a moment to slam the press for an erroneous report that a bust of Martin Luther King had been removed from the Oval Office. “This was irresponsible and reckless,” Spicer said.
2. Sean and Melissa McCarthyÂ
Spicer’s combativeness continued in the days after he first took the podium. Three weeks in, Melissa McCarthy made headlines for her portrayal of the White House spokesman on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
“I would like to begin today by apologizing on behalf of you to me for how you have treated me these last two weeks and that apology is not accepted ’cause I’m not here to be your buddy,” McCarthy said. “I’m here to swallow gum and I’m here to take names.” (Last year in a Washington Post profile, Spicer acknowledged that he chews and swallows two and a half packs of gum before noon.)
Later, Spicer said, “I think Melissa McCarthy needs to slow down on the gum chewing. Way too many pieces in there.”
3. Find the leakerÂ
Spicer again made headlines for gathering White House staff for a meeting and asking them to turn over their work and personal phones to prove that they weren’t leaking information.
Information of the meeting was, of course, leaked, and the Internet, of course, took him to task for it, posting tweets that poked fun at the meeting.
Spicer would go on to lambaste the media repeatedly for running reports that used information leaked by the Trump administration.
4. ‘Stop shaking your head’Â
Then came his standoff with American Urban Radio Networks reporter April Ryan. During a March briefing, Ryan asked Spicer about the perceptions of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia as the FBI investigation into possible collusion during the campaign continued. As Spicer answered, Ryan started to shake her head.
“Please stop shaking your head,” Spicer said. “It seems like you’re hell-bent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays.”
Ryan described her interaction that day as becoming “roadkill.”
The next day, the two made a point of greeting each other cordially.
5. Comparing Hitler favorably to AssadÂ
In perhaps his most infamous moment in his time at the podium, Spicer likened Syria’s Bashar Assad to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II. You had … someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink … to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said during a briefing. “You have to, if you’re Russia, ask yourself, is this a country and a regime you want to align yourself with?”
When reporters pointed out that yes, Hitler did use chemical weapons in the Holocaust that murdered 6 million Jews and other minority groups, Spicer continued: “I think when you come to Sarin gas … he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing. He brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that. But I was saying that in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down into innocent — into the middle of towns.”
He later apologized for his comments and said they were a “mistake.”
6. ‘Among the bushes’Â
On the day that President Trump fired James Comey as FBI director, the White House was reportedly in chaos as they rushed to put an explanation together.
And, according to a report from The Washington Post, Spicer and his staff huddled in the bushes on the grounds as they discussed how to put a message out to waiting reporters.
It drew even more attention after The Post had to issue a correction that Spicer was “among” the bushes, not actually “in” them.
Shortly afterward, cutouts of Spicer started appearing in bushes across the country.
7. Standing by ‘covfefe’
In June, President Trump tweeted what we assumed was a nonsense word.
“Despite the negative press covfefe,” Trump tweeted, and said nothing else, shortly after midnight one day.
But rather than saying that the president had made a typo, Spicer insisted that it was not, in fact, nonsense.
“No, I think the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” Spicer told reporters.
Posted!
1 of 34
2 of 34
3 of 34
4 of 34
5 of 34
6 of 34
7 of 34
8 of 34
9 of 34
10 of 34
11 of 34
12 of 34
13 of 34
14 of 34
15 of 34
16 of 34
17 of 34
18 of 34
19 of 34
20 of 34
21 of 34
22 of 34
23 of 34
24 of 34
25 of 34
26 of 34
27 of 34
28 of 34
29 of 34
30 of 34
31 of 34
32 of 34
33 of 34
34 of 34
Article source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~/405987092/0/usatodaycomwashington-topstories~Major-moments-of-Sean-Spicers-time-as-White-House-press-secretary/