President Donald Trump has no sense of balance. He also has very little sense of humour. We counted on his press secretary to give us that bit of fun that made the White House scene safe for family entertainment.
But Sean Spicer is gone. He has been replaced. It takes two to replace him. We are getting a blousy Monica Lewinsky look-alike to cover the media room platform and a wise-ass New Yorker to run the fake news show.
And it is all show business as usual. Any connection between the American president and what the news media are being told is probably co-incidental. It just surprises us that it takes two people to replace old Sean.
Whether Sarah Huckabee Sanders will last on the White House stage as much as six months as did Sean is anybody’s guess. She did a workmanlike job as Sean’s assistant briefer recently. We are just waiting for the time when she runs out of patience with the denizens of the White House news media.
Her boss, the new communications director for the White House, has much greater challenges. He is a glib character whose main experience seems to be as a hedge-fund manager. So far, the only people he seems to have conned are his company’s customers and Mr. Trump. Now his challenge is the United States and the rest of the world’s media. In a single appearance before the media, we got the impression that his strategy is to talk fast and smile a lot. (Which is what hedge fund managers do—don’t they?)
But can we ever again see a press chief playing peek-a-boo in the dark of the White House Rose Garden? Will there continue to be briefings that say one thing and presidential tweets that say something completely different?
But there could be one serious request of this new communications guy that would go a long way to correcting the impression that the White House is in the hands of a legion of incompetents. Please, please sir: add an editor to your staff. Somebody who knows the English language is desperately needed in that zoo. We are not talking here about the occasional typo. Nor do we care that Mr. Trump missed all his spelling classes during his obviously limited schooling. We are concerned about official documents and media material. Proper spelling would go a long way in raising respect and understanding.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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