11 Of Sean Spicer's Most Embarrassing Moments

No one likes to go out with visible food stuck in their teeth, which is why most people have friends they trust. Unfortunately for Spicer, the backstabbing apparently runs deep in the Trump White House, and he ended up on a stage more public than most of us will ever face, living out an actual nightmare. Spicer getting spinach stuck in his teeth is, at least, a situation we can all relate to.

Again, this could have happened to any of us — simply wearing a piece of jewelry upside down, putting on the wrong earring, anything. But when Sean Spicer puts an American flag pin upside down, the internet notices — and starts thinking that he's trying to send out a distress signal.

You would think that if you're the White House Press Secretary and the White House has just bombed a country, you would have no trouble remembering the name of that country's leader. Not so for Sean Spicer, who keeps saying "Bisaa al-Ashar" — or something like that. Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Spicer. Say it with me now: Bashar al-Assad.

Sure, there were a lot of nominees for various positions to keep track of — and there hopefully will be more, if Trump ever decides to fill out his government. But Spicer probably should have thought twice before he denied this particular report:

The "next SECNAV", or in other words a nominee for Navy Secretary, did in fact withdraw shortly after Spicer made his overly confident statement. So — did he know the nominee was thinking of backing out and he lied? Or did he just not know and then act like he did? I'm not sure which would be better.

Okay, so it's not Spicer's fault that he has to defend Trump's golfing hypocrisy. But does he have to do it this badly? In defending how much golf Trump plays, Spicer said something about building diplomatic relations and then continued on with this gem: “On a couple of occasions he’s actually conducted meetings there, he’s had phone calls. Just because he heads there doesn’t mean that’s what’s happening.” Just because he heads to Mar-A-Lago, Spicer meant, doesn't mean that he's playing golf. And so what, instead he's conducting top secret meetings in public dining halls? Is that any better? Sorry, Spicer, but there was just nowhere to go but down in this case.

When the Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, people on both sides of the aisle could agree that she was a fairly controversial nominee — but not Sean Spicer. His statement about DeVos' confirmation is so ridiculous that it almost veers into the realm of performance art:

The fact that we had to get to the point where the vice president had to be pulled in to overcome the Democrats’ historic and partisan logjam of the president’s qualified nominee is another glaring reminder of the unprecedented obstruction that Senate Democrats have engaged in throughout this process. The American people sent a strong message when they elected President Trump in November: they’re fed up with business as usual in Washington. Democrats in the Senate should expect that voters will remember how they stood in the way of the president enacting an agenda that put him into office.

Let's just break that down, shall we? "The Democrats' historic and partisan logjam" — the Democrats certainly weren't the first ones to that party. "The president's qualified nominee" — DeVos essentially had no qualifications, besides a history of spending money to try to affect education policy. "The unprecedented obstruction that Senate Democrats have engaged in" — something they did with the support of millions of Americans calling in and asking them to do just that. "The American people sent a strong message when they elected President Trump" — a minority of the American people elected President Trump, which doesn't exactly give him a strong mandate. "Democrats in the Senate should expect that voters will remember how they stood in the way" — yes, but I expect that Senate Democrats will benefit from that.

Spicer didn't like the question he thought he was getting from April Ryan, a reporter for American Urban Radio Networks, so he interrupted her and lied for a while — before telling her to stop shaking her head. The exchange is insane, and it doesn't come off great for Spicer. It did come out well for Ryan, who has been brought onto CNN as a political analyst.

Spicer said that Paul Manafort, once Donald Trump's campaign manager, had a "limited role" in the campaign. He was only the campaign manager, right? As Vanity Fair's Tina Nyugen put it, "even Stalin was more subtle when he airbrushed Nikolai Yezhov out of existence."

At the same press conference where he tried to brush off Trump's connection with Manafort, Spicer tried to give the same treatment to Michael Flynn by saying that Flynn had "been a volunteer of the campaign." Even if Flynn somehow wasn't making any money as a campaign advisor or in his position as national security advisor, it's at best highly misleading. The statement essentially puts Flynn on the same level as the guy selling the hats at the Trump rallies, which could not be farther from the truth.

Spicer did not start his tenure out on a high note, when he immediately came out and claimed that Trump's inauguration was the most watched in history, "both in-person and around the globe." Photos clearly show that the first part of that statement is untrue, but Spicer stuck by it, saying "Sometimes we can disagree with the facts." This led to the whole "alternative facts" episode, and by that time Spicer had made it clear that he didn't mind lying to the American people, even when the truth is obvious to anyone willing to look.

"Be careful about comparing stuff to the Holocaust" is a good rule of thumb for anyone who speaks or writes in public for a living — and Spicer has now learned it the hard way. In a misguided attempt to explain why Trump absolutely had to bomb Syria in response to Assad's chemical attack on his own people, Spicer claimed that Hitler didn't use chemical weapons. Then, when he attempted to clarify things, he pretty much just dug himself deeper into a hole, calling concentration camps "Holocaust centers" and saying that Hitler "was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing." That statement, while true, seems to draw a sick sort of moral comparison between the two leaders. Spicer has apologized for this particular misstep, but it's still absurd to think that it happened in the first place.

Towards the end of that list, it veers away from embarrassing Spicer himself and towards embarrassing the administration as a whole. But either way, I would venture a guess that no one sane thinks that Sean Spicer is doing his job well these days.