Spicer: Another Canary in the Coalmine
Well, this is interesting. Spicer began lying for Donald Trump on his first day on the job, when he made false statements about the size of the inauguration attendance in defense of Trump’s false statements on the same subject. He hasn’t stopped lying since. He’s been a lying mouthpiece for Trump’s abominable conduct for six months. He took the job, moreover, after Trump’s reputation as a brazen, pathological liar was well-established, and he’s stayed in the position despite public criticism from Trump and having seen, up front and personal, Trump’s habit of throwing aides and operatives, advisers, appointees, even his entire party, under the bus at the slightest perceived provocation — i.e., if it suits his own interests in the moment. While Trump has indicated an occasional willingness to support certain allies, such as disgraced former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, the condition of such “loyalty” appears to be that the subject must be willing to serve as a slavering toady to his ego and a public panderer and promoter of Trump’s lies and brand. Even then, as Chris Christie and others have repeatedly learned, abject self-abasement and personal degradation are not necessarily enough to earn them the rewards they seek.
So what do we make of the Spicer resignation?
Has he, as several Facebook friends have suggested, “finally grown a pair”?
Is, as the NYT article posted above suggests, the appointment of financier Anthony Scaramucci, a man with no formal communications/PR experience, as his boss just too humiliating to take?
Is there some bigger lie or scandal coming down the pike that is too much for even Spicey to defend?
Does Spicer know or sense that Trump’s about to go even further off the rails, and wants to get off the sinking ship before Spicer also needs to lawyer up and start hemorrhaging his personal savings on legal bills?
And what are we to make of the Times’ report and the Twitter rumors that both Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus have previously acted to block Scaramucci — a “ferocious defender” of Trump’s and a friend of Don Jr.’s — from having a role in the White House, and that Scaramucci was appointed to this position over Preibus’s and Spicer’s and Bannon’s specific objections?
The answers, I think, can be found at the very end of the NYT piece:
The appointment of Mr. Scaramucci, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s earliest campaign supporters, was backed by the president’s daughter Ivanka, his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the officials said.
What we are dealing with here is a crime family, and the Trumps and Kushners have far more in common with mobsters than they do with with Republican party operatives and loyalists. I’m not the first to note it and I won’t be the last. But as craven, complicit, and contemptible as Spicer and Priebus may be, they are not part of the Trump family or extensions thereof, and their loyalty to Donald Trump is provisional and situational, not personal.
Spicer and Priebus and a host of GOP apparatchiks have been willing to lie and dissemble for Trump, but not for Trump qua Trump. They’ve done so for the broader goals they wish to accomplish. Whether those goals are supporting the GOP brand, or massive tax cuts for the wealthy, or stripping health care from millions, or robbing women of their reproductive rights, or some other agenda, they’ve gotten in bed with Trump and tolerated and enabled his nepotism and his grifting and his grifting relatives, in order to achieve the larger “good” (in their own eyes) of accomplishing other goals. And they have attempted to bring some form of discipline and at least the perception of adherence to the rules and ways of Washington and to the veneer of adherence to democratic norms and values, if only for the sake of protecting their own reputations and the Republican Party.
Trump and his family members and his closest allies clearly know this; and their desire to replace Spicer, their distrust of Priebus, and their wariness toward anyone who does not actively support the Trump Family Brand — which is the only place the Trumps’ own loyalties lie — is based on the view that only a pure loyalist can be trusted.
Trump and his family and closest supporters have reportedly been unhappy with Spicer because his lies are inartful and embarrassing; they want a smoother liar and a ferocious one; a person who will exhibit fierce, reflexive loyalty to Trump and his family personally, regardless of truth, fact, or appearance; indifferent to the law, to constitutional and democratic norms, to decency, or to the reputation of the Republican Party or the United States itself. This move is a shake-up the family members wanted and in my view this move is sending a message out to many groups. The family is telling the GOP, “we’re tired of party operatives, because they are not simply our tools”; it’s telling the press and the Washington establishment, “we’re going to do and say whatever we want, even more than we have before; Spicer was weak, but with someone strong and loyal in the position, Trump will be strengthened, and you are going to have to deal with it”; it’s telling professional journalists and communications people, “we don’t need anyone who knows anything about communications and journalism to do the job; financial interests allied with ours and defense of us at any cost are the only ‘qualifications’ needed”; and it’s telling the White House staff and federal employees everywhere, “loyalty to the Trump family is required for any job security”.
The support of the Trump family is the key here. (And Scaramucci’s reputation for vindictiveness is probably a plus.)
Priebus appears to have wanted the communications director to have at least some credibility — because he recognizes that credibility is required for a president to function in his role, and of course for him (Priebus)to do his own job and to attempt to protect the reputation of the GOP. The family does not trust Priebus, and they didn’t trust Spicer, because the men’s very first loyalty was not to their family uber alles. Priebus and Spicer may be lying stooges, but at the end of the day, they are not Trumps. They got into bed with the Trumps, but like all Republicans who are not Trumps, there is some line somewhere they won’t cross. It’s nowhere near where a Democrat’s line would be, but it exists. That line may be personal — such as the humiliation or potential personal legal risk that comes, for both Spicer and Priebus, with Scaramucci’s appointment — but it exists. The Trumps know this, and as their legal and political positions in Washington become more precarious, the existence of even a theoretical line appears to be no longer acceptable to them.
The ugly reality is that whatever that line is for Priebus, it is so far from any conception of personal integrity that once he finally draws it, it won’t matter — his reputation will be in tatters, just as Spicer’s already is. And so it goes for every person who gets in bed with these people.
The Trumps are willing to sell America out to enemies, thugs, and murderers for their own personal gain, lying all the way that their casual corruption, stupendous ignorance, and hypocrisy are “making America great.” The GOP has looked the other way so far —it has ignored the trademarks, the D.C. hotel contract with the government, the new hotels targeted at his base, the golf course promotion, the solicitations for Chinese investments, the hawking of the clothing line, the foreign “policy” based on the Trumps’ and Kushners’ business interests, the attacks on the judiciary and the press and American citizens, the endless lies about Russia and other things — in service of its own corrupt agenda, relying on party apparatchiks like Priebus and Spicer to try to impose some semblance of discipline and Washington-style normalcy on what is essentially a near-criminal enterprise of exploiting government for the petty personal gain of Trump and his adult children and closest friends. If that means abdicating our role as a proponent of human rights around the world, of betraying our allies, of ceding our election process to Vladmir Putin and collaborating with him to “prevent” the hack of our election that both claim never happened, of allowing Russia to dictate Middle Eastern policy, well…it’s all worth it if it allows the GOP to destroy the social safety net, undermine public education, eliminate reproductive rights including birth control, roll-back civil rights, cut taxes for the rich, eliminate regulations designed to protect consumers and the environment, and pack the courts with ultra rightwingers. The entire GOP is complicit in this unfolding destruction of our democracy.
But a true constitutional crisis is coming. Trump is floating trial balloons for it every day. And what seems like an easily-predicted ouster of Spicer is another canary in the coalmine. The decision to transition to a pugnacious, family-approved loyalist over a party professional is about more than communications strategy. The hiring of another person with no experience in government, no concern for the GOP’s reputation, no apparent respect for governing norms, no experience in communications or journalism, but known for his vociferous support for Trump, is the action of a family that is abandoning even the pretense, however thin, that anything matters to them other than their own self-preservation.
