On Inauguration Day, Sean Spicer performed a great public service of displaying just how crazy the incoming dotard president is. I assert that Spicer’s problem throughout his tenure was how well he channeled the petulant, persecuted Trump psyche. His recent Emmy appearance, far from normalizing Spicer, highlighted the prescience of that Inauguration Day farce with its looming presidential narcissistic sociopathy.
A press secretary has no power or ability to set any policy. The job is to present the presidential face to the media. On Inauguration Day, Spicer set out that face very accurately. Conspiratorial and persecuted, unmoored from fact or reason, foreshadowing every petulant, reactive presidential act from health care to North Korea.
Spicer was no Inauguration Day expert ready to internally debate crowd size history. What he did in those few hours was his job—take in the crazy exasperation, the anger and panic, the factless raging sea of hateful narcissism and then vomit it all up for the world to see.
That day’s experience guided his entire tenure as press secretary. He saw that crazy space and tried to render it for all to see. He was fired because Trump is crazy enough and that needed no competition. The current press secretary has a millimeters-wide emotional range from bored to indignant, thereby not amplifying the worst of our dotard president. Spicer showed Trump for what Trump is. While surely unintentional, this display was a public service.
The Emmy appearance was a provocative spotlight on Trump crazy, not a normalization of Spicer. He is a Reagan child, growing up in the Republican right that is always sensitive to slights and treating others as an attacking enemy. He does not want your normal.