A brief history of Sean Spicer’s most controversial moments
From nearly the beginning, Sean Spicer’s tenure as White House press secretary has been a turbulent ride.
Within less than four months, the Rhode Island-bred Republican went from respected, Washington-famous communications pro to pop culture caricature. Spicer’s latest offering to the always-ready-to-pounce political social media crowd — in which he broke the well-known public relations rule on making Adolf Hitler comparisons (Don’t.) — didn’t help.
Here’s a brief timeline of Spicer’s major gaffes since officially taking the job as President Donald Trump’s chief spokesman.
January 21: White House press secretary attacks media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds (CNN)
One day after Trump’s inauguration, Spicer used his first press briefing to lambast the media for accurately reporting the event’s crowd size compared to prior inaugurations.
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said, despite all available evidence showing otherwise.
More than six weeks later, the National Park Service released official photos that clearly showed Trump’s crowd paled in comparison to the number of attendees at President Barack Obama’s 2009 and 2013 inaugurations.
January 24: Sean Spicer wrongly uses Pew study to bolster claim that non-citizens vote in large numbers (PolitiFact)
Following Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims of massive voter fraud, Spicer tried to back up his boss’s baseless statement with numbers.
“I think there’s been studies,” he said. “There’s one that came out of Pew in 2008 that showed 14 percent of people who voted were non-citizens. There’s other studies that have been presented to him. It’s a belief he maintains.”
But as Politifact points out, Spicer got a couple things wrong — chief among them: There was no 2008 Pew study.
Spicer is conflating a couple different studies that have been erroneously used to prop up claims that noncitizens have swayed elections by voting illegally.
There is no study that shows 14 percent of the votes cast in 2008 were cast by noncitizens. That would have added up to more than 18 million fraudulent votes — an implausible assertion, considering the total noncitizen population was about 22.5 million in 2010.
It appears that Spicer meant to refer to a Old Dominion University study published in 2014, which estimated 14 percent on non-citizens were registered to vote. The study was subsequently widely refuted, including by the researchers who put together the data the findings were based on.
January 31: WH spokesman: Trump called immigration action a ‘ban’ because the media used that word
Following Trump’s executive order temporarily banning refugees and immigrants from seven mostly Muslim countries, Spicer criticized the media for using the word “ban” — even though Trump himself had repeatedly used the same word to describe the order.
“He’s using the words that the media is using,” he said, later adding, “The words that are being used to describe it are being derived from what the media is calling this.”
March 20: Spicer says Manafort played a ‘very limited role’ in the campaign (Politico)
Following reports that Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign, had ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, Spicer downplayed the former’s role.
“There has been discussion of Paul Manafort, who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time,” he said.
Manafort was with the Trump campaign for five months — during three of which he was the chairman.
March 28: Exasperated Spicer tosses out salad dressing analogy to defend WH (CNN)
In response to a question from reporter April Ryan, Spicer deployed a memorable critique of the media’s coverage of Trump’s ties to Russia.
“If the president puts Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that’s a Russia connection,” he said.
March 28: Sean Spicer tells reporter to ‘stop shaking your head’
During the same exchange with Ryan, Spicer was criticized for what some said was disrespect cast toward the longtime White House correspondent for the American Urban Radio Networks.
“It seems like you’re hellbent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays,” Spicer said after Ryan pressed him on her Russia question. “I’m sorry, please stop shaking your head again.”
Ryan later called Spicer’s response from the podium “insulting.”
April 11: Sean Spicer says even Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons
In the latest blowup Tuesday, Spicer made the unfortunate error — during Passover, no less — of stating that Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons, despite the Nazi leader’s well-documented use of gas chambers to kill his victims during the Holocaust.
“Someone as despicable as Hitler… didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” he said, attempting to convey the seriousness of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s alleged used of chemical weapons on his own people.
Given a chance to immediately clarify his response, Spicer doubled down.
CLIPS: @PressSec: “Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons…” –AND– his point of clarification on Hitler comments. pic.twitter.com/Cu0qy6eXfk
— CSPAN (@cspan) April 11, 2017
“I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no, he (Hitler) was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” he said.
Spicer later put out a statement and went on CNN to apologize for the remarks.
“Frankly, I mistakenly made an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which there is no comparison,” he said. “And for that I apologize. It was a mistake to do that.”
