White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday responded to a report that President Donald Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort worked “to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin” by asserting that the report did not implicate Trump and citing Hillary Clinton’s dealings with Russia.
“Do you still stand by the comment that he [Manafort] had a ‘limited role’ on the campaign, and if you could explain a little bit more about how spending months as the campaign’s top official is a limited role?” Yahoo News reporter Hunter Walker asked Spicer at his daily briefing.
Spicer said the Associated Press report was “focused on actions that Paul took a decade ago.”
“I think nothing in this morning’s report references any actions by the President, the White House or any Trump administration official,” he said.
On Monday, Spicer characterized Manafort as someone who played “a very limited role” on Trump’s campaign “for a very limited amount of time.”
He clarified that description during his briefing on Wednesday, though the White House continued to distance itself from Manafort.
“I should have been more precise with respect to Paul’s role, so let me clarify this and kind of go through the facts,” Spicer said. “Paul was hired to oversee the campaign’s delegate operation.”
He said that Manafort was hired on March 28 last year and left the campaign on August 19, 2016.
“In total he was involved with the campaign for a total of just under five months,” Spicer said.
He compared Manafort’s work to that of Tony Podesta, who Spicer described as a “Clinton campaign fundraiser” and the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
Spicer went on to call Clinton “the face of the failed Russia reset policy” and said Manafort’s connections were “not even close” compared to Clinton’s “most significant role with respect to Russia.”
“So a individual who worked for the campaign for five months, for the President’s two-year-long campaign, who worked with a Russian entity a decade ago is the subject of rampant media speculation all day long, even though the Clintons had much more extensive ties,” Spicer said.
He said that Trump was “not aware” of Manafort’s clients and said there was “no suggestion” that Manafort did “anything improper.”
“To suggest that the President knew who his clients were from a decade ago is a bit insane,” Spicer said.
When Manafort left Trump’s campaign in August 2016, the then-candidate said in a statement that he had accepted his campaign chair’s abrupt resignation. On Wednesday, however, Spicer did not dispute a reporter’s characterization that Manafort had been fired.
“Why did the President fire Paul Manafort?” a reporter asked.
“Well, for two reasons,” Spicer said. “One is I think that there were some issues coming up with his ties to Ukraine that were becoming a distraction and, secondly, he was I think 16 points down at the time. And he was down in the 20s in women. And I think the President recognized that he needed to make a change for those two reasons.”
Meh… Spicey Sean would have done better to reference Seward’s Folly.
History is so damn hard
It’s not about Hillary, ya fucking, misinformative bludger
Of all the attempts to deflect and obfuscate this has to be the lamest yet.
“To suggest that the President knew who his clients were from a decade ago is a bit insane,”
Not “a stretch.” Not “unrealistic.” “Insane.” Why, because candidate Trump, like President Trump. is lazy and does not give a damn? It took journalists about five minutes to uncover this thing that it’s “a bit insane” to expect Trump to know.
Hillary isn’t the one being investigated for being in bed with the Russians