Sean Spicer Is Our Duke Of The Week

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Noticing a sudden lack in invitations to make cringey jokes about his penchant for lying while riding around on a mobile White House press podium in front of America’s rich and famous, former press secretary Sean Spicer has found a new way to squander his dwindling, Anthony Scaramucci-level relevance in the political spotlight:

He wrote a really bad book.

From the glaringly bland title, “The Briefing,” to the fifth grade-level prose, to the abundance of factual errors that even a mini-fridge that decided to pursue a career in proofreading could catch, the critics agree: the novel is about as disastrous as his White House lawn party casual-wear, as cataclysmic as his rage-filled first press briefing, as ignominious as the fact that the requisite, post-White House job offer from Fox News never arrived.

According to reviews of “The Briefing,” his most striking errors are elementary. He fumbles the decade during which President Trump’s predecessor served as commander-in-chief, describing a reporter asking Obama a question in … 1999. He refers to Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier that makes salacious claims about President Trump’s fetishes, as Michael Steele, who is actually the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Spicer also attempts to rewrite history throughout the volume, omitting publicly accepted facts about key, well-documented scandals in Washington. While journaling about working for former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), he lavishes his old boss with dull praise. “[He] knew how to manage the news cycle. And on top of that, he was good to staff and fun to be around,” he writes, conveniently forgetting to mention that Foley resigned over his habit of sexting teenage boys who worked in the congressional page program.

Despite being the press secretary during the epically tumultuous eight days between Trump firing FBI director James Comey and the appointment of a special counsel, Spicer also completely ignores key details of the story that formed the basis of the “witch-hunt” thorn in the President’s side: that Trump asked James Comey for “loyalty”; that Trump asked Comey to leave Michael Flynn alone; and that Trump, in the Oval Office, told Russian officials he didn’t need to sweat about the probe with Comey gone.

And a Spicey novel wouldn’t be complete without mention of his former boss’ most beloved punching bag: Hillary Clinton. And her emails.

“Imagine if any one of us had illegally copied classified information and placed it on the computer of a sex offender,” he writes. “How many special prosecutors would that entail? It is this kind of double standard that stokes Donald Trump’s ire and erupts in his tweets and statements.”

Aside from the actual content of the Spicer tell-all, the rollout of the new memoir has been shaky, making the public relations nightmare that unfolded after he dove into an actual shrubbery to avoid talking to reporters, look like child’s play.

— During a promotional interview on NBC’s “Today” last week, Spicer, a full grown man, literally giggled about his reputation of lying to the press.

— A book-signing event at a warehouse store in Massachusetts was cancelled due to the “political climate.”

— He was called a “garbage person” who wrote a “garbage book” by a protester at a New York City Barnes and Noble. The protestor also craftily hit Spicer where it hurts by mocking the crowd size at the event: “I hope you look around and you see all these empty seats!”

For writing a book so riddled with lies that even Stephen Colbert couldn’t justify making it the butt of a chummy joke — that would inevitably suffer an Emmy-level flop — Sean Spicer is our Duke of the Week.

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for sanni sanni says:

    I am still trying to figure out what the heck was trying to convey with the Trump as a “Unicorn riding a unicorn over a rainbow” description.

    What job are you interviewing for, Sean, with this book? Trump’s valet? It has to be something directly for Trump (caddy, perhaps?) as this greatly diminishes your already greatly diminished credibility to work for just about anyone else.

  2. Avatar for clare clare says:

    Donnie really knows how to pick em. Way to Be Best, Seanie!

  3. “Imagine if any one of us had illegally copied classified information and placed it on the computer of a sex offender,” he writes.

    WTF is Spicey talking about?

    If he’s talking about the copies found on Wiener’s laptop:

    1. The e-mails weren’t placed on the computer, Huma Abedeen used Wiener’s computer to access her work e-mail and Outlook downloaded that stuff into the machine.
    2. It’s been well-established that much of that material was classified after the fact.
    3. I’m pretty sure that Wiener was not a convicted sex offender at the time.

    I guess all-in-all, Spicer was working for his perfect boss. Neither would know the truth if it clobbered them with a clue-by-four.

  4. I guess all-in-all, Spicer was working for his perfect boss. Neither would know the truth if it clobbered them with a clue-by-four.

    I couldn’t decode his nonsense, but you are probably right… (.his ignorance of IT is astonishing)

    Apparently he likes lying, still angling for a job somewhere in Rightwing Media… I hope he ends up working on a used car lot in the mid-west…

    “First time the Devil made me do it, second time I did it myself”

  5. So I agree with this book greatly diminishes his already diminished credibility, so when Spicey was RNC spokesperson was he this sloppy? Would that count as his first bite of the Rightwing welfare system?

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

12 more replies

Participants

Avatar for system1 Avatar for josephebacon Avatar for joelopines Avatar for lastroth Avatar for notborneveryminute Avatar for stradivarius50t3 Avatar for sanni Avatar for frankrizzo Avatar for thomasmatthew Avatar for clauscph Avatar for hypnomorph Avatar for tiowally Avatar for clare Avatar for dominic

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: