Passive, Pliable Priebus

When Sean Spicer was discharged from his position as presidential press secretary, Jack Shafer wrote

The White House attracts all manner of toadies, suckups and flatterers seeking the president's favor, but never did any staffer demean, degrade and humble himself to the chief executive the way outgoing press secretary Sean Spicer did. Abandoning the arts of both persuasion and elision that have served previous prevaricating press secretaries so well, Spicer flung barb-tongued lies in the service of President Donald Trump.

Waste no tears on Spicer, Shafer maintained, because "Had his nose grown with every Pinocchio he uttered, it would have reached the moon." He asks rhetorically

What thanks did Spicer earn for his months of debasement in service to Trump? The early and steady drumbeat from the Oval Office that the president was “disappointed” in his performance, as CNN’s Jim Acosta reported in early February, and never-ending whispers that he would soon be sacked, which finally came true today. He gave Trump the red blood of his undying loyalty. Trump gave him the pink slip.

Do you want debasement? True debasement began when

 “I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff,” Trump tweeted from the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, where Priebus still sat waiting in a black SUV. Other aides riding with him hopped into a different car once the tweet posted. His SUV separated from the motorcade and went on a rainy ride through Washington alone.

Debasement continued and was raised to an Olympian level when on Friday morning, Wolf Blitzer asked Priebus how he was doing and he responded "I'm doing great."

Just the way you and I would be doing if we had just been fired.  To make matters worse, Priebus evidently had to debase himself when talking about the guy who took his job at the moment he himself was sacked.    "I think General Kelly is a brilliant pick," the former RNC chairperson said, and "you know, the president was great."

He  added "this is not like a situation where there is a bunch of ill will feelings. This is, I think, good for the president" to have forced him out. But he wasn't fired: oh, no, he practically made the decision himself.

"Any time either one of us think that we need to make a change or move in a different direction," Priebus rationalized, "just talk about it and get it done. And, so, I think the president thought about that and we talked about it yesterday. And I resigned and he accepted my resignation."

Priebus continued to be impressively inauthentic. The President "was right to hit the reset button" because "bringing in fresh people is a good thing."  (That fresh person already was chairperson of the Department of Homeland Security, but never mind.)  Trump "wanted to go a different direction" and "I support him in that." "I support what the President did," Priebus claimed, "and I offered my resignation and he agreed and we moved on. He accepted it."

While telling the American people how happy he was to be fired- make that "to resign"- Priebus was allowed on at least four occasions to avoid even attempting to pretend to answer a question. "I'm not going to get into that, Wolf," then "I'm not getting into that, Wolf," followed by "I'm not going to get into his (Scaramcci's) accusations," and finally "I'm not going to get into that one, either."

Todd Purdum recognizes that Priebus "had repeatedly beseeched Trump to modulate his message and play well with the other candidates in the crowded Republican field."  The President "saw that as a sign of weakness, and responded accordingly," unsurprising for a man whose bosom heaves heavily for men in uniform- Mattis, McMaster, Kelly,  

Spicer, who evidently is looking forward to a presidential campaign in 2024 by Mike Pence, is no prize, either.  But unlike Priebus, he doesn't say "I'm on Team Trump, I'm a Trump fan" and wallowing in humiliation.











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Spicer, Compared To The Others

Politico's Jack Shafer believes we should waste no energy sympathizing with Sean outgoing presidential press secretary Sean Spicer because

we find no Trump transgression so foul that Spicer would not grovel before it. When Trump praised North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and invited thuggish Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House, Spicer dispensed sympathy and understanding upon the despots. No Trump mistake was too mundane for him to correct: He insisted that the word “covfefe,” which appeared in a late-night Trump tweet, wasn’t a typo. When Trump alluded to secret Trump-Comey audio recordings, Spicer dodged all questions about their existence. After the president claimed Obama had tapped his phones at Trump Tower, Spicer created a diplomatic incident by falsely accusing British intelligence of doing the snooping.

Spicer got off  to a bad start with

that first press briefing, in which he took no questions and made his ridiculous claims about the inauguration crowd size. Those claims, which we can assume were forced on him by the president, set him on a trajectory he never reversed.

Anthony Scaramucci, the incoming White House communications director, got off to a splendid start. Well-dressed, exquisitely polished, endlessly charming, with pitch-perfect delivery, Scaramucci declared in his first news conference

But here's what I tell you about the president: He's the most competitive person I've ever met. OK -- I've seen this guy throw a dead spiral through a tire. I've seen him at Madison Square Garden with a topcoat on, he's standing in the key, and he's hitting foul shots and he's swishing them, OK? He sinks three-foot putts.

Obviously there's a lot of incoming that comes into the White House. But the president's a winner, OK? And what we're going to do is we're going to do a lot of winning.

He's the most competitive person I've ever met. OK -- I've seen this guy throw a dead spiral through a tire. I've seen him at Madison Square Garden with a topcoat on, he's standing in the key, and he's hitting foul shots and he's swishing them, OK? He sinks three-foot putts.






But the fellow who now swears the President is an uncommon mix of Stephen Curry, Mike Trout, and Dustin Johnson had once referred to Trump as an "odd guy," his campaign as a "spectacle," and Hillary Clinton as "incredibly competent."  So with an Alice In Wonderland quality, he tweeted "Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters,."

In the interest of "full transparency," he is erasing his past. The guy who is erasing past tweets also commented on Twitter "the politics of gotcha are over. I have a thick skin and we're moving on to @POTUS agenda & that's all that matters." He left out only "I have the thickest skin God ever created."  But in his news conference he had declared "the president's a winner, OK? And what we're going to do is we're going to do a lot of winning," and Donald Trump swooned.

We need not cry over Sean Spicer's demise. But Spicer has done what Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump publicly has regretted hiring, has not. He has done what Alternative Facts Conway, inventor of the Bowling Green massacre, has not. He has done what his colleague, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who "heard from a large number of individuals that work at the F.B.I." that they're happy James Comey was fired, has not done.  And he was never the complete and utter bootlicker Scaramucci obviously is.

He has quit. That's not much, and for all we know, he may turn into President Trump's greatest defender when he actually leaves the Administration. But probably not. And little as it is, a resignation is thus far one of the most courageous and sensible acts anyone in this regime has taken.





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Loose Tweets

In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, President Trump stated "You know, if you issue hundreds of tweets and every once in a while you have a clinker, that's not so bad."

Ironically, that itself is a clinker, or rather a clunker, which presumably is what Trump meant. But lest we think he was unusually self-effacing by admitting that his batting average falls somewhere below .997, the President went back to his well-known well yet again, contending  "My last tweet, you know the one that you are talking about perhaps, was the one about being in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true."

In fairness, that was not the tweet in which he suggested that Barack Obama himself had set up the bugs (cartoon below from Monte Wolverton/L.A. Daily News).  Rather, Trump was referring to the tweet, one among a series, alleging "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism."

Two weeks after the barrage, Trump would claim "Wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff,". "But that really covers surveillance and many other things."

No it  doesn't. All wiretapping is surveillance but not all surveillance is wiretapping. Wiretapping is wiretapping.  When the President's press spokesperson attempted to rationalize the tweet by claiming the boss was trying to expand the meaning of the word, linguist Jeffrey Nunberg instead explained 

Is “wiretap” a colloquial term? Not by my lights, but it might seem that way to Trump; the fact that he writes it as two words, spelling the second one “tapp,” suggests that he hasn’t encountered it in writing all that often. As Lucy Ferris has written of Trump’s chronic misspellings, “If you see a word correctly spelled millions of times, then regardless of the peculiarities of English orthography, you’re apt to know when it looks ‘wrong.’” 






Whatever evidence Senate Intelligence Committee chairpersonNunes apparently received from the Administration and then surreptiously traveled to the White House to give to the President has not been revealed to the general public. But it should not be forgottent that Trump claimed or strongly implied a) there was wiretapping; b) he was the target; c) Obama ordered the acting; d) nothing was found; and e) it is McCarthyism.

As of now,  we cannot determine the validity of (a), (b), (c), or (d) and know that (e) is false.   Even if the first four parts are valid, that would leave the President of the United States and leader of the free world with an average of 80%. That's a little more than one among the hundreds Donald J. Trump claimed.

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Minister Of Propaganda

Bill Maher observed the first week (!) of the Trump presidency and recalled

Before the election, I was saying there's a slow-moving coup happening and fascism could come to America. This week the President talked about sending troops into Chicago.   He said I'm going to send the Feds in. By the way, Chicago- only the 18th worst murder rate of cities in America. The idea of Donald Trump sending a private army into an American city is not a precedent I really want to see, talked about. 

Starting up black sites for torture overseas. His chief strategist and the media said the media should keep their mouth shut and just listen. He muzzled agencies- EPA can't tweeet or talk any morein comination with this concept of alternative facts, so you can't get out the real facts.  EPA- the only facts we hear are the alternative facts. I'm just saying it's easy to get distracted.








Sean Spicer seems to be one of the culprits (although it has been learned he was not primarily responsible for the following).  President Trump announces the refugee ban on the same day as Holocaust Remembrance Day and forgets Jews were its primary victims. As Trump's mouthpiece, Spicer states

I gotta be honest. The president went out of his way to recognize the Holocaust and the suffering that went through it and the people affected by it and the loss of life. And to make sure that America never forgets what so many people went through, whether they were Jews or gypsies, gays, disability, priests…

Still no mention of the primary victims, constituting what is a hop, step, and a way from Holocaust denial.

There is a rumor that Spicer and Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway are an item, and not in a good way, which at least adds a little intrigue to the unprecedented conentration of power in the Executive branch.  On Fox News Sunday, in the portion (beginning at 16:56 of video below) of her rant which seemed least unhinged, Conway contended

And yet we deal with him every single day. We turn the other cheek. If you are part of team Trump, you walk around with these gaping, seeping wounds every single day, and that's fine. I believe in a full and fair press. I'm here every Sunday morning. I haven't slept in a month. I believe in a full and fair press. But with the free press comes responsibility.

Sure enough, the First Amendment begins "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," a provision deeply offensive to resident theocrat Mike Pence. In the Conway version, it continues as

.... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press- unless that press is not acting responsibly- or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What's that? Not accurate? But that's the alternative facts of the Counselor to the President, in which freedom of the press may not be abridged by government unless the press is not acting with "responsibility."





And that, boys and girls, is the presidential adviser not named Sean Spicer or Steve Bannon, but instead the one-time winner of the New Jersey Blueberry Princess Pageant and World Champion Blueberry competition, now a mover and shaker in an Administration determined to establish an authoritarian state.








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