WASHINGTON—Laughably dishonest, relentlessly combative and impossible to not watch, Sean Spicer was the perfect spokesperson for Donald Trump.

And now he’s taking his props and going home.

Six months and one day into his tenure as the president’s chief public propagandist, the White House press secretary famously skewered on Saturday Night Live resigned Friday after a long string of self-inflicted and Trump-inflicted humiliations.

Spicer had become an improbable celebrity, an afternoon sensation whose televised briefings produced almost no useful information but drew more viewers than General Hospital. Trump, a television obsessive who often watched The Spicer Show himself, bragged about Spicer’s ratings as if they were evidence of his own popularity.

They were not.

Viewers were tuning in for the political equivalent of the four-alarm-fire coverage on the local newscast, and other aides knew the briefings were going badly even if the president didn’t. When new communications director Anthony Scaramucci and new press secretary Sarah Sanders took the podium after Spicer’s resignation, it was the first on-camera briefing in three weeks.





In truth, Spicer was always an odd hire for Trump: stammering for a president who cherishes smooth; rumpled where the president prefers suave; a loyal party man for an outsider president suspicious of his party.

What he did have was a willingness to lie. All the time. About virtually everything.

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Spicer’s first post-inauguration briefing set the tone for the rest. Slamming the news media for alleged unfairness, he declared that Trump’s inauguration had drawn the largest crowd of all time, “period.” It was not even close.

The performance was aimed, as many of Spicer’s future deceitful performances were, at an audience of one. Spicer often appeared to be striving to please Trump rather than serve any particular strategic goal.

Spicer could be helpful and charming to reporters in private. Republicans who know him sympathized with his plight: trying to explain and defend the words and acts of a president prone to the inexplicable and incomprehensible.

Hs attempts at spin were regularly undermined by Trump himself. After Spicer insisted that Trump’s policy on travellers from seven (later six) Muslim countries was “not a travel ban,” Trump tweeted: “I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”

Spicer frequently appeared out of the decision-making loop, time and again telling questioners that he would have to get back to them. At times, he attempted to subtly indicate that he did not personally share Trump’s inaccurate views.

“He has been, was, and will be again well-respected in this town. He took on a role that redefines impossible. In the dictionary, ‘impossible’: the definition’s going to be ‘spokesman for Donald Trump,’ ” Rich Galen, former press secretary for prominent Republican legislators Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich, said in an interview.

But nobody was forcing Spicer to stick around to do Trump’s dissembling.

“Being Donald Trump’s press secretary is probably an impossible job but Sean’s willingness to lie and debase himself and the office was particularly noteworthy,” Dan Pfeiffer, who was Obama’s White House communications director, said in a message to the Star. “He chose to lie and undermine the traditional role of the media, so he has no one to blame but himself.”

Press secretaries have always sparred with reporters. Under Spicer, the usual chiding gave way to an all-out assault. Spicer depicted obvious questions as bias, reporting of verifiable facts as “shameful.”

Much of Trump’s base appeared to delight in the lambasting. But Spicer’s words alarmed democratic watchdogs who worried about the consequences of such broad disparagement of the press. His diatribes were so outlandish that he became SNL gold for Melissa McCarthy, who played him as a raging, puppet-wielding imbecile.

Trump, Politico reported, was bothered — less that his spokesperson was being depicted as an inept liar than that his spokesman was being played by a woman.

Even as he professed continued support in public, Trump was reportedly cruel to Spicer in private. Spicer, a Catholic, let it be known that he badly wanted to meet the Pope during Trump’s May visit to the Vatican. Trump left Spicer off the list.

Spicer suffered through, though he moved to a less visible role in June. His final straw, according to the New York Times, was Trump’s Friday decision to hire Scaramucci, a well-coiffed, well-dressed financier with almost no political experience, as communications director.

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Scaramucci, a regular guest on Fox News, delivered a hyperbolic first performance on Friday in which he declared his “love” for Trump and hailed the president’s “karma.”

At one point, Scaramucci was asked whether he believed Trump’s lie that three million people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

“If the president says it,” Scaramucci said, “there’s probably some level of truth to that.”

“Let me do more homework on that, and I’ll get back to you,” he added, and it was like Sean Spicer never left.

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