(Original photos: Alex Wong/Getty Images, Smithsonian Magazine)

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer took the podium for the first time, delivering a very on-message speech from the new administration (i.e., he refused to take questions, slammed the Democrats, and harangued reporters for supposedly misrepresenting the size of the crowds at Trump’s inaugural events). But this brief briefing also served as a trial by fire for Spicer himself: Could he get through an entire five minute speech to the press without slipping in an attack on his arch-enemy Dippin’ Dots, The Ice Cream Of The Future?


As social media detectives have quickly discovered, Spicer has been waging a quiet, one-sided Twitter feud with the flash-frozen spherical treat. It started in 2010, when Spicer—still a year out from taking up his previous post as communications director for the RNC—tweeted out “Dippin dots is NOT the ice cream of the future,” a blatantly incendiary claim that flew in the face of the company’s long-cherished slogan. It’s not clear what provoked Spicer’s attack—a bad trip to the zoo, maybe, or possibly Six Flags—but it was still sticking in his craw a year later, when he doubled down on the bold claim:


It’s to Spicer’s credit, though, that he didn’t content himself with mere opinions on the matter of Dippin’ Dots V. The Future: A month later, he supplied evidence, linking to a Wall Street Journal article about the company’s financial woes. (The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011, although it’s not clear how much of that was due to Spicer’s tweets.) His foe apparently slain, Spicer laid down his sword, and got back to the much more important work of attacking President Barack Obama for every conceivable thing he ever possibly did.


And for a time, there was peace. But then Dippin’ Dots wandered, foolishly, back into Spicer’s crosshairs in 2015, by failing to ship enough vanilla-flavored ice cream to a Washington Nationals baseball game that he was at. Within moments, the old fires were raging again:


(The Nationals do not seem to have responded to this tweet.)

Now, none of us—powerful press secretary or tub of tiny frozen ice cream balls alike—can know what the future holds. But we can still hope for a better one (and, maybe, a better ice cream), and also we can hope that a reporter will ask Sean Spicer about Dippin’ Dots at a White House press briefing at some point, because that would be very funny to us.