Surprise! Sean Spicer's book is full of incorrect 'facts.' DATE: 2024-05-24 18:14:36
Sean Spicer's back, and yep, he's still in desperate need of a personal fact-checker.
On Tuesday, "The Briefing: Politics, the Press, and the President," a memoir written by the former White House press secretary, was published, but sadly the contents are not entirelyaccurate.
In the book, Spicer -- who infamously lied about inauguration crowd sizes -- gets important names wrong, and even says Barack Obama was president in 1999. Oops. That's an error so mortifying an author might feel compelled to hide in the bushes.
SEE ALSO:A big, beautiful collection of Sean Spicer’s most WTF momentsIn a review on Tuesday, Jonathan Karl called Spicer out for his error-filled book in The Wall Street Journal, explaining, "Mr. Spicer has not been well served by the book’s fact checkers and copy editors."
Karl details how Spicer referred to the author of that Trump dossier (yeah, the one with the pee tape in it) as "Michael Steele" instead of "Christopher Steele," which is a serious issue. Michael Steele is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, whereas ChristopherSteele is a former British intelligence officer, aka the ex-spy behind the dossier, so, uh kinnnnnnndof a big difference.
According to Karl, Spicer also wrote that a reporter asked former president Barack Obama a question at a 1999 White House press conference. As most humans know, Barack Obama was not president in 1999. He was elected for his first term in Nov. 2008, and took office a full decade after 1999 in the year 2009. In the iconic words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, "Big mistake! Big. HUGE!"
Karl then goes on to explain that Spicer also made some noteworthy omissions in his text:
"He writes about working for Rep. Mark Foley (R., Fla.), who he says 'knew how to manage the news cycle. And on top of all that, he was good to staff and fun to be around.' He never gets around to mentioning that Mr. Foley later resigned in disgrace for sending sexually explicit messages to teenage boys working as congressional pages."
And while some assumed that Spicer was ill-served by his fact-checker, it's entirely possible he didn't even have one.
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But professional fact-checker or not, some of these mistakes definitely should have been caught before the book went to print. I mean, at the very least, WE ALL KNOW WHEN BARACK OBAMA WAS PRESIDENT.
Another explanation for the error-riddled chapters is that Spicer was too busy selecting the perfect metaphors to describe Trump to pay attention to details.
I mean, if theentire bookwas accurate he might not have had time to call Trump a "rock star," an "inflatable ball in a swimming pool," "the Energizer Bunny," and "a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow."
Priorities, people.
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