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Sean Spicer would like you to buy his book – despite his reported lack of rigor, his revisionist history and his lack of remorse the untruths he's narrated on the White House podium. And on Tuesday, at a stop of his book tour, an interviewer let him take it.
"It was the beginning of the most corrosive crop," said Emily Maitlis of the BBC. "You played with the truth, you took us on a dangerous path, you corrupted the speech for the whole world by going with these lies."
Spicer's Reply? I know you are, but what am I. And also: Everyone does it.
"With all I want – I'm sorry, Emily," Spicer replied. "You act as if everything starts and ends with that.You take no responsibility for the many false stories and false stories that the media perpetrated … I take responsibility where I think I have failed or I could have done better, but for you to make that kind of claim and give the impression that everything starts and ends with Donald Trump is absolutely ridiculous. "
At another time, Spicer repeated his past defense that it was his job to speak for the president No matter what it meant:
MAITLIS: I know from what I've read that you care about the freedoms and institutions and democracy on which –
SPICER : [TRADUCTION]
MAITLIS: – your country was built. It's the office of the president who spits lies or half-truths or jostles real truths, and you were his agent during those months.
SPICER: My job, as I stated in the book, was to be the president. spokesperson and communicate his thoughts and ideas when he was not able to do it or was not present. But at the end of the day, he's the president of the United States, and these are his thoughts and ideas. . . and his feelings that it was my job to communicate.
Prosecution interviews such as the one Maitlis gave to Spicer should be used in rare circumstances. But it's a circumstance in which she is completely deserved.
As I have already written, being a spokesperson often requires you to follow the party line, which is undoubtedly true. But there is a difference between making a tense argument and making it a laughable one. There is a distinction between spinning and promoting unfounded conspiracy theories. You can maintain your credibility with the public and journalists by deftly defending your cause, but once you've crossed the line of ridiculous and demonstrable lies, that's the point of no return. If other spokespersons have no qualms about spewing falsehoods and do not pay a professional price, the system will collapse.
Spicer argues that it is so that things have always been done – only spokespersons like him rotating their bosses. This is not true. I have worked with hundreds of flasks over the years, and the vast majority of them have kept their credibility fiercely in ensuring that they have at least stayed within the limits of plausibility. Maybe Spicer had a boss who made it impossible or maybe he was not very good at it; the answer is not to flambé the truth and pretend that you have no choice.
This is political nihilism. There is always a choice, and Spicer made his first day of the Trump administration with the infamous display involving the size of Trump 's inauguration crowd. And in fact, he did it a long time before that; During the election, Spicer bluntly refused anything that another journalist had on tape. Clearly, he was much less concerned than other spokespersons to say something that bit him, and this was confirmed during the first six months of Trump's presidency
Republicans will see interviews like those and see Spicer among the many. the Conservatives would be persecuted by the media. They will buy his excuse that he was just doing his job and think his conduct was tied with all the other White House press officers. That was not it. And allow him to brush it under the carpet is indeed to allow our speech to be corrupted.
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