Politics April 5, 2017
Turns out when White House press secretary Sean Spicer hates you, the rest of the world loves you. Something we like to call the “Sean Spicer effect”.
Indeed, following Spicer’s recent beef with ProPublica the news organization gained over 90,000 Twitter followers in less than 48 hours (a 17% increase), according to emails from ProPublica obtained by ENTITY.
Here’s how it happened.
On Monday ProPublica reported that a clause in Donald Trump’s trust document had been quietly changed to allow the President to withdraw money from his businesses whenever he wants, without telling anyone. An important revelation considering when Trump took office he allegedly distanced himself from his businesses by putting them in a trust.
When Spicer was asked about the report during a press conference Monday, he denied it. He then cried fake news : “I’m not aware there was any change (to the trust). Just because a left-wing blog makes the point of something changing doesn’t mean it actually happened.”
ProPublica, a highly respected news organization which specializes in investigative journalism (not a “left wing blog”), didn’t exactly like Spicer insinuating their report was false. So they decided to destroy Spicer via Twitter. And by destroy we mean annihilate with a string of fact-based Tweets, since “facts” are like Kryptonite to the press secretary.
.@seanspicer 2/ @seanspicer was trying to knock our story that Trump’s trust doc was revised to say he can take $ frm biz anytime https://t.co/xcohyMmoRc
— ProPublica (@ProPublica) April 3, 2017
.@seanspicer 4/ The Trump trust doc was revised & signed Feb. 10. Here you go, @seanspicer: https://t.co/f1SgoNeIJ1 pic.twitter.com/9odXRrFEjV
— ProPublica (@ProPublica) April 3, 2017
.@seanspicer 6/ What we do is hold people in power accountable, no matter who they are, or what names they call us. We do it with facts. Like…
— ProPublica (@ProPublica) April 3, 2017
And it just kept going …
.@seanspicer 8/ The fact that Trump has quietly installed officials across the government to be his eyes and ears: https://t.co/UhSNXaGwBH
— ProPublica (@ProPublica) April 3, 2017
.@seanspicer 9/ The fact that Jared Kushner isn’t actually separating himself from his business empire: https://t.co/ZNFNVOkfdL
— ProPublica (@ProPublica) April 3, 2017
Not only did the clap-back garner intense media attention — a collective “woo!” let out across newsrooms — it once again made Spicer look like an idiot whose only defense is to cry fake news any time the Trump administration doesn’t like a story. Even in a case like this in which the Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten CONFIRMED the story.
*Sigh*
