Sean Spicer just lost
Sean Spicer wasted no time humiliating himself as Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretary following his inauguration. Rather than wait until after the weekend to give his first scheduled briefing, Spicer demanded the press trek in on a Saturday for a five-minute grievance session over supposedly misreported inauguration crowd size and other journalistic “crimes.” Six months later, Spicer resigned.
Nearly five years later, Spicer is still at it with the aggrieved routine, and it is clear he’s not any better at it. Spicer’s latest faux outrage is over his firing by President Joe Biden from the last gig Trump gave him, which was a member of the U.S. Naval Academy Board of Visitors. In September, Biden asked the 18 board members of Defense Department service academies who Trump had appointed to resign. When Spicer refused, Biden fired him.
Although this move was not exactly surprising, Spicer and another fired board member, former Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, sued the Biden administration in federal court, demanding to be reinstated immediately. Judge Dabney Friedrich—herself a Trump appointee—saw through Spicer’s flimsy arguments, however, and issued a ruling swiftly denying the lame request.
Judge Friedrich ruled that despite Spicer and Vought’s bold claim that Biden had no authority to remove them, they failed to provide any legal authority. Also, although they claimed their removal would “silence dissenting views,” Spicer and Vought never pointed out how their views were different than other board members’ opinions or how offering “dissenting” advice that a President would never consider somehow serves the public interest.
Spicer, who joined the U.S. Navy Reserve as a public affairs officer over two decades ago, currently holds the rank of Commander. However, Spicer has been proving that in the world at large, he is anything but. Unfortunately for Spicer, the more he continues to gripe and try desperately to cling to relevancy, the faster he hastens his fade into political oblivion.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month