In most presidential administrations, two people have held the jobs of press secretary and communications director. That changed when Donald Trump moved into the White House, and Sean Spicer was tapped to fill both positions.
After his first few weeks on the job, Spicer has become one of the targets for the “mainstream media” in their many attempts to smear and bring down the Republican occupant of the Oval Office.
Along these lines, the press secretary was lampooned in a video posted on the GQ website Wednesday morning that contained 10 words he has mispronounced or misstated in his many hours at the podium, including such examples as “lasterday” instead of “yesterday” and “jordge” for “judge.”
The video was assembled by Matt Negrin, who explained in a post on Twitter that he “noticed while watching [Spicer's press] briefings ... then went back and rewatched all 10 of them, and picked [the] best words.”
The first item in the list is “althewize,” Spicer's “bungled” version of “otherwise,” followed by “basi,” an abbreviated form of “basically."
Some of the entries are so brief that it's difficult to determine the context in which the mistakes were made, most notably “chorr,” which apparently refers to the “chair” of a Congressional committee.
Others are much more obvious, such as “drung prices” for “drug prices” and “fress office” instead of “press office.”
Sometimes, Spicer has added syllables to ordinary words, including “esigdesigejucation” for “education” and “historicalhistoric” instead of “historic.”
Other examples of this pattern are “inimpulintation” instead of “implementation,” “Kabalkabul-twi” for Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, and “rurufgratefully” instead of “gratefully.”
Also stated during the dozens of hours the press secretary has spent talking to members of the media are “grobe,” when he meant to say America's “allies around the globe,” and “nuch” instead of the first syllable in “much-needed.”
There are times when only one letter is changed, as in “orser” for “executive order” and “sisty” instead of “sixty.”
Other missteps are more confusing, such as “pharm” for “promise,” “transerptation” instead of “transportation” and “vroter” in “voter fraud.”
The remaining entries in the video are “usupport” instead of “support,” “wintofrom” for “from” and “yewuh-U.S.” instead of “U.S.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, people in the press didn't wait until the Trump administration got underway to hammer Spicer, who was still the spokesman for the Republican National Committee when Cable News Network host Wolf Blitzer complained in late November that Trump hadn't denounced a white supremacist group enough.
“Should he write it in the sky with an airplane?” Spicer responded. “I mean, at what point is it enough? I don't know, but I think that he has been very clear, and it's time to move on.”
Then in early January, Spicer told Joe Concha of The Hill that the media were still not treating Trump with respect and insisted the media continue to cheer on Democrats without shame.
The press secretary barely had a chance to move into his office before ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl tried to get Spicer to “pledge never to knowingly say something that is not factual.”
On the following day, the journalists at ABC cheered Spicer’s “reset” and the need to “repair his heated relationship with reporters.”
Just days after President Trump signed an executive order temporarily banning people from seven terrorist-supporting countries from entering the U.S., Spicer called out NBC News for inaccurately reporting on the results of the action.
On February 1, the White House took the historic step to involve four journalists from outside Washington, D.C., in the Daily Press Briefing, but that didn’t sit well with many establishment media reporters, who complained the "outsiders" were too soft for their liking.
Finally, during the February 6 edition of CNN's New Day program, Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter and CNN media analyst Bill Carter sang the praises of Saturday Night Live following Melissa McCarthy’s parody of Sean Spicer, spinning that the skit represents “a problem for the White House [and Spicer] going forward.”
Meanwhile, Susan Wright of the RedState reported on Wednesday that the White House may be looking to lighten Spicer's load by bringing in another person to fill the post of communications director.
“The hope is that taking that extra responsibility off of Spicer’s shoulders will improve his performance,” Wright stated.
“At least he's not Josh Earnest,” she concluded, referring to the press secretary of the Obama administration.
