ANOTHER WHITE HOUSE SHAKE-UP
▶ Appointment of a new communications director prompts resignation by Sean Spicer, Rob Crilly reports
Sean Spicer’s abrupt resignation as White House press secretary on Friday followed months of uncertainty as president Donald Trump struggled with low popularity ratings, an all-consuming Russia investigation and factional infighting.
It arrived amid a major shakeup of Mr Trump’s press and legal teams in the latest attempt at a reset.
Insiders said Mr Spicer’s departure was triggered by the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier, as White House communications director.
Although he was asked to stay on as press secretary, Mr Spicer told Mr Trump the new appointment was a mistake and that he wanted to leave.
It brought to a close long-running speculation that the gaffeprone spokesman had fallen from favour and suggested his ally, Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff, and others who came up through the mainstream of the Republican Party might also be vulnerable.
Stuart Rothenberg, a Washington political analyst, said Mr Spicer’s departure was yet another symptom of an administration in crisis, suffering a malaise that emanated from the top.
“We know what the problem is. It is not Sean Spicer, it is not Reince Priebus, it is not HR McMaster [national security adviser] – who all have flaws and weaknesses,” Mr Rothenberg said. “It is Donald Trump.”
The new communications director may bring a slicker persona, he said, but would struggle to stem the negative headlines.
Mr Spicer said he would stay in his post until next month.
“It has been an unbelievable honour and privilege,” he said. “This is something you dream of. I can’t thank the president enough.”
Mr Spicer had been the public face of the White House for most of its first six months. He became a figure of ridicule from Day 1, when he was forced to defend outlandish claims about Mr Trump’s inauguration crowd.
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” he told a press corps that had seen photographs that showed otherwise. It was not the last time Mr Spicer would be obliged to exaggerate, overstate or even lie for the president.
Worse followed. In April, he said that not even Adolf Hitler used chemical weapons during the Second World War, as he made a point about Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s claimed use of sarin gas against civilians.
That was, of course, overlooking how millions of Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
As a result he became the butt