Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Blossom]

HE JUST KEEPS DIGGING



Like, there's no way Spicer survives, this right? Even if Trump saves him, he's getting shuffled to a different job... right?

Trump's been hiring open Nazis since before Election Day. Why would Nazi apologism or Holocaust denial be a problem?

I mean, you remember the Holocaust Remembrance Day thing? Nothing happened from that.

[Mongrel]

It's less "blatantly a racist/asshole/whatever" as "blatantly a complete idiot". Trump cares about the latter because it "makes him look bad" (ho ho).

[Thad]

Yeah, Trump may not have a problem with nazis, but he has a big problem with being embarrassed, and this wouldn't be the first time Spicer embarrassed him. I could see him going down for that. We'll see what the coverage looks like over the next few days.

As far as being a deliberate dog whistle: I'm willing to Hanlon it and figure Spicer was too dumb to realize what he was saying, but the line definitely sounds like a scripted taking point, so even if it wasn't an intentional dog whistle on Spicer's part, I find it very easy to believe that it was an intentional dog whistle on the part of whoever fed him his script (or fed it to Trump to feed to him).

[Blossom]

"Hitler didn't use chemical weapons" was definitely a scripted talking point, and that I think was an intentional dog whistle. "he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent- into the middle of towns" was Spicer talking scriptless and with no prep time. That was him talking off the cuff, and that's when internal prejudices really come out, when you don't have the time to internally censor what you're saying.

Spicer himself might or might not be a Holocaust denier, but I think it's clear he thinks that whether it happened or not, it would have been the right thing to do.

[Blossom]

Meanwhile:

[Thad]

"Hitler didn't use chemical weapons" was definitely a scripted talking point, and that I think was an intentional dog whistle. "he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent- into the middle of towns" was Spicer talking scriptless and with no prep time. That was him talking off the cuff, and that's when internal prejudices really come out, when you don't have the time to internally censor what you're saying.

Spicer himself might or might not be a Holocaust denier, but I think it's clear he thinks that whether it happened or not, it would have been the right thing to do.

I read it more as Spicer doing what he always does: somebody points out that what he just said is obviously wrong, and he bullshits his way into explaining why it's actually right. That Hitler's methods were different from Assad's is of course true, so Spicer fumbled for that and pretended the differences were relevant to the matter at hand. Very, very badly. ("Holocaust Center." My God.)

All that said? Dude works for Trump. Excusing xenophobia and fascism is basically his entire job description. "What percentage is Spicer antisemitic and what percentage is he just stupid and ignorant?" is a Zen thing, like "How many babies fit in the tire?"

[Mothra]

That Hitler's methods were different from Assad's is of course true, so Spicer fumbled for that and pretended the differences were relevant to the matter at hand. Very, very badly. ("Holocaust Center." My God.)

I think the one good thing to come out of our current nightmare is seeing Thad constantly driven to having no words but "My God." It's like the single most absurd thing.

Like, so much of what comes out of this cabinet is so inane or so shockingly incorrect there's nothing to be done but stare at it, flabbergasted.

[Thad]

I thought "oy vey" would have been in poor taste under the circumstances.

[Friday]

(jews said that)

[Brantly B.]

Yeah but not, like, innocent Jews.

[Mongrel]

"Hitler didn't use chemical weapons" was definitely a scripted talking point, and that I think was an intentional dog whistle. "he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent- into the middle of towns" was Spicer talking scriptless and with no prep time. That was him talking off the cuff, and that's when internal prejudices really come out, when you don't have the time to internally censor what you're saying.

Spicer himself might or might not be a Holocaust denier, but I think it's clear he thinks that whether it happened or not, it would have been the right thing to do.

I read it more as Spicer doing what he always does: somebody points out that what he just said is obviously wrong, and he bullshits his way into explaining why it's actually right. That Hitler's methods were different from Assad's is of course true, so Spicer fumbled for that and pretended the differences were relevant to the matter at hand. Very, very badly. ("Holocaust Center." My God.)

All that said? Dude works for Trump. Excusing xenophobia and fascism is basically his entire job description. "What percentage is Spicer antisemitic and what percentage is he just stupid and ignorant?" is a Zen thing, like "How many babies fit in the tire?"

Yeah, this is pretty close to my take.

[Mongrel]

"it's true that—I believe—that he didn't only have one gas park, he established franchises for the gas parks. but ashad is bringing the chemicals to innocent people, it's like a traveling carnival, it's much worse in some ways. and the people aren't weird or different from him, they're the same."

I almost thought this was an actual further quote.

[beatbandito]

I remember when all the Holocaust Centers went out of business here, now we just have Assad Shacks

[beatbandito]

Also without reading into this as directly antisemitic I think it's more of an entitled white people problem. To Spicer there is legitimately a difference between targeting people that are different than you, and general attacks that could impact someone of the same religion / race / etc. He's not being sneaky or saying how he feels about those particular people (and I'm not saying he necessarily doesn't feel that exact way about those exact groups) as much as he legitimately believes that it's totally different when his group does similar things to people they've chosen. The Japanese Internment / Muslim Ban paradox.

[Brantly B.]

From Assad's (Ba'ath) point of view, the people (Not Ba'ath) he's targeting ARE as different from him as the Jews were to Hitler. Like, to an almost exactly parallel degree. The fact that Spicer not-even-ironically is hammering on this "They're all the same over there" point is probably a lot more immediately relevant than whether or not he even knows what a Holocaust is, which isn't to belittle the fact that he doesn't know what a Holocaust is but to point out what an INCREDIBLY FUCKING HUGE PROBLEM IT IS that these people are getting us involved in a conflict that they have less than a gradeschooler's understanding about.

[Sharkey]

Pepsi: Oh fuck this is the most embarrassing thing.

United: Hold my beer a minute.

Spicer: Nah bruh, I got this.

Also:


"Spicer, stop spicing!"

All I can hear in my head. Every fucking time.

[Brantly B.]

The entire country just really needs to get laid.

[Mazian]

First special House election of the season is done, in Kansas 4; the Republican candidate won by an 8% margin, in a district that Trump won by 27% and the former Republican rep won by 31%. That's a heck of a swing in a matter of months, even if some of it can be attributed to the state's wildly unpopular Republican governor.

One week until the election in Georgia's 6th! Should be interesting.

[Blossom]

The Democratic commitment to losing by only a little is definitely astounding. And, of course, refusing to fund races because the candidate is a progressive.

[Mothra]

White House lifts federal hiring ban:

Cautioning "this does not mean agencies will be free to hire willy-nilly," Mulvaney said the across-the-board hiring freeze the president imposed by executive order three days after taking office in January is being replaced with a "smarter plan, a more strategic plan, a more surgical plan."

So, that particular campaign promise lasted all of three months.

I love that the official statement is "there was no plan on this one, folks. We're going to try to think of something. Holy shit there was absolutely zero plan."