The Philippine Star

Sean Spicer, we’ll always have ‘facts’

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Oh, Sean Spicer, our four-Pinocchio press secretary, is this the end? We know we are not supposed to “just yell out questions,” but rather “raise our hands like big boys and girls,” but is it really, truly over?

It seems like yesterday — maybe you would insist it was yesterday — that President Trump drafted you from the Republican National Committee farm team for the Big Show. There you were, in the White House the day after Inaugurati­on Day, saying, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inaugurati­on — period.” It was your introducti­on to America, and America’s fact checkers, when you noted that Jan. 20, 2017, was “the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall.”

You gave us “the president’s tweet speaks for itself,” “That is called a bollard wall. That is called a levee wall,” “stop shaking your head,” and a new term, “Holocaust center.” You gave us Melissa McCarthy playing you. Or was it the other way around?

How you defended Mr. Trump! When he stood before a memorial to Central Intelligen­ce Agency officers killed on duty and lied about his inaugural crowds, you said the CIA employees “gave him a five-minute standing ovation at the end in a display of their patriotism and their enthusiasm for his presidency.” When he fired his FBI director, you had Mr. Trump’s back from (near) the White House shrubbery, off-camera, in the dark. When you made the president angry, and he denied you an audience with the pope, you soldiered on.

But now you are gone, because on Friday the boss finally went too far. He appointed Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch, to be communicat­ions director. A man with tailored suits. A financier. A Fox News contributo­r who also gets along with the “Fake News” journalist­s. With that, it was all too much. Oh Spicey, you lasted six months and a day. Or are those “inaccurate numbers”? You were not loved by reporters — or would you disagree, because “proceeding­s were intentiona­lly framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered”?

From the beginning, when an apprehensi­ve America wondered what was ahead, you stood behind the lectern at the White House and lied. Even though lots of people do it now, you were a trailblaze­r, and nobody can take that away from you.

Let’s not say goodbye. Let’s just say you have no further comment.

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