Sean Spicer has made more than a few missteps during his brief time as press secretary, but Donald Trump doesn’t care.
In fact, he’s said to enjoy Spicer’s missteps because they’re good at getting attention.
via NYDN:
President Trump refuses to axe his harried, gaffe-prone press secretary because his daily briefings are ratings gold, an insider told the Washington Post for a story published Sunday.
“I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” Trump reportedly said during a White House lunch last month. “That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.”
The reality star turned commander-in-chief — a voracious television consumer — reportedly went on to compare Spicer’s performances to a soap opera, adding they drew almost as many eyeballs.
The spokesman’s live briefings have, indeed, trumped soap ratings: Attracting an average 4.3 million viewers, Spicer at one point outshined CBS’s “The Bold and the Beautiful” and ABC’s “General Hospital,” per a February New York Times story.
Trump’s reported remarks appear to predate Spicer’s unfortunate April 11 word salad claiming “someone as despicable as Hitler … didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons” while justifying the U.S. airstrike on Syria over President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
The glossing-over of millions gassed in Nazi death camps — compounded by Spicer’s coining the phrase “Holocaust center” in place of “concentration camp” — prompted many, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the caps lock-heavy Anne Frank Center, to call for his firing.
He went on to issue a flurry of apologies, ultimately calling his comments “inexcusable and reprehensible.”
Spicer’s blunders, mispronunciations and former life as the White House Easter Bunny have earned him a critically hailed “Saturday Night Live” impersonation courtesy of Melissa McCarthy, who reprised the role most recently last weekend.
This administration has become a HUGE ratings ploy for news networks like CNN.
Do yourself a favor and watch the video below. #StayWoke
This @voxdotcom video on the mess that CNN has become is really well done and informative.pic.twitter.com/iSeXezpdxX
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) April 17, 2017
