by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Apparently the primary qualification for being press secretary in the Trump administration is the ability to lie with a straight face. Yesterday Trump's official flack, press secretary Sean Spicer, was trotted out in front of the press corps where he charged in a fit of pique that reporters had lied about the number of people who had been at the inauguration - making the total much smaller than it actually was. The actual liar, of course, was Spicer, and everyone in the press room knew it. Sean Spicer then refused to take questions and fled the stage.
Later in the day, lying Sean's boss, The Donald, went to a meeting with the CIA where he, himself, felt obliged to also whine about the press's failure to inflate the numbers of people who attended the inauguration. It was despicable that they would report that only 250,000 people attended, particularly while also reminding the public that 1.8 million had attended Obama's first inauguration.
Politicians lie, for a raft of reasons, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that a President or his press secretary would misspeak, misdirect, or tiptoe through a field of falsehoods. But to do so on their first full day in office, and to do so for something as trivial as a squabble over crowd size, is just sad - and it reflects poorly on the new President. It shows the world just how easily Donald Trump can be baited and played. What so many hoped would be an age of promise is quickly morphing into an age of petulance.
And petulance is not presidential.
Citizen Journalist
Apparently the primary qualification for being press secretary in the Trump administration is the ability to lie with a straight face. Yesterday Trump's official flack, press secretary Sean Spicer, was trotted out in front of the press corps where he charged in a fit of pique that reporters had lied about the number of people who had been at the inauguration - making the total much smaller than it actually was. The actual liar, of course, was Spicer, and everyone in the press room knew it. Sean Spicer then refused to take questions and fled the stage.
Later in the day, lying Sean's boss, The Donald, went to a meeting with the CIA where he, himself, felt obliged to also whine about the press's failure to inflate the numbers of people who attended the inauguration. It was despicable that they would report that only 250,000 people attended, particularly while also reminding the public that 1.8 million had attended Obama's first inauguration.
Politicians lie, for a raft of reasons, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that a President or his press secretary would misspeak, misdirect, or tiptoe through a field of falsehoods. But to do so on their first full day in office, and to do so for something as trivial as a squabble over crowd size, is just sad - and it reflects poorly on the new President. It shows the world just how easily Donald Trump can be baited and played. What so many hoped would be an age of promise is quickly morphing into an age of petulance.
And petulance is not presidential.
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