New York Times’ columnist Frank Bruni is missing Sean Spicer, not because he was so great at his job (he sucked) but because Sarah Huckabee Sanders is so much worse (or better, depending on how you look at it). According to Bruni,
True, she hasn’t told a lie as tidy as Spicer’s ludicrousness about Donald Trump’s inauguration crowds. But her briefings are breathtaking — certainly this week’s were.
For some 20 minutes every afternoon
• down is up
• paralysis is progress
• enmity is harmony
• stupid is smart
• villain is victim
• disgrace is honor
• plutocracy is populism and
Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia if anyone would summon the nerve to investigate her (because, you know, that never, ever happens).
I watch and listen with sheer awe.
And Bruni thinks, it’s not her. It’s us. This administration has worn us all down.
Other press secretaries demonized the media, but not as ambitiously and artlessly as she. On Wednesday, she was reminded of her recent statement that all leaders have flaws, and she was asked to name one of Trump’s.
“Probably that he has to deal with you guys on a daily basis,” she said.
She needs a vocabulary lesson…
As he cuts to the chase, plain and simple.
She’s awful at this, but that makes her an excellent fit for an administration in which mediocrity, inadequate experience and nepotism run rampant.
Besides, she’s serving a function other than communication, which turns out not to be her forte. (To listen to her pronounce “priorities” is akin to hearing the air seep out of a flat tire, and she leaves half of the consonants on the curb.)
So, with a horrible example like her boss, to whom does she look up?
“When it comes to role models, as a person of faith, I think we all have one perfect role model,” she answered, characteristically using a non sequitur as an evasion. “I point to God. I point to my faith. And that’s where I would tell my kids to look.”
But if they’re to look away from Trump, why does she so willingly look up to him? And how does she square her faith with the purveyance of so much gobbledygook? Maybe she tells herself that there’s no contradiction. That would be her grandest fiction of all.
What would Jesus do, indeed? #Sad
(Photo, YouTube/ Illustration, L.A.Times; via NY Times)