Sean Spicer’s Sad Harvard Lectures Are Baffling Even for Sean Spicer

He hasn't changed and why would we expect him to?
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Chip Somodevilla

Sean Spicer, still trundling along on his post-White House prestige tour, is well into his semester as a visiting fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics. But it looks like the biggest hurdle in Spicer's rehabilitation mission is just being Sean Spicer and having to talk to people.

The Huffington Post interviewed students who have had to sit through Spicer's Q&A sessions, and they seem as baffled as everyone else about what the hell the former press secretary is doing there. Harvard insists that Spicer has some worthwhile insight into the workings of the White House and the nature of the media. According to the people who actually have to suffer through him though, Spicer spends most of his time coming up with excuses for all the offensive and straight up false lines he gave in press briefings. Apparently he regularly circles back to Benghazi and "well Obama said you could keep your doctor."

Below are some of the most depressing quotes from this Harvard-approved speaker, paraphrased by students since he's "incredibly inarticulate, so it was really difficult to take any sort of notes.”

I said in the first press conference that the inauguration was witnessed by the most people ever, so I was also talking about social media and online reporting of the inauguration, not just crowd sizes, which are obviously hard to calculate.

Right, it's hard to calculate but I'm still absolutely right about it. Also, Spicer was happy to go onstage at the Emmy's and crack jokes about how he was obviously lying about the inauguration crowd, but now he wants you to know that he was totally serious and correct.

An alternative fact is 3+1=4 or 4+0=4. Those are alternative facts. A lie is 3+2=4. Alternative facts are legitimate tools to use in politics.

As a reminder, "alternative facts" isn't some high-level, galactic brain political strategy; it's something Kellyanne Conway pulled out of her butt mid-interview as an excuse for why the White House was lying about that inauguration crowd. So, no, Sean, according to the administration you still shill for, an "alternative fact" is a "lie."

My proudest moment as press secretary was getting the opportunity to give people tours of the White House.

"My favorite part of the job was doing a different job."

The coolest moment as press secretary was having the New England Patriots all standing in my office waiting to go meet the president. When I was growing up, I had to sit in the middle bleachers and watch them from the stadium. Now I have the whole starting lineup in my office and got to take a selfie with them before they met Trump.

That does sound a lot cooler than when the president refused to let Spicer, a devout Catholic, meet Pope Francis. But hey, at least you got to meet the Patriots without Tom Brady there.

Reporters had the chance to go and knock on my door and see me any time, but they would only ask questions during the White House press briefing so they could be on camera. They could have asked me at any other time of the day. [HuffPost White House reporter S.V. Date reports that “the door was almost always closed. You needed his gatekeeper’s permission to get in. I never got permission.”]

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Meanwhile, it's important to remember that Harvard chose to rescind the same fellowship offer to Chelsea Manning, who surely had more substantial ideas to contribute than Sean Spicer, if for no other reason than she's not Sean Spicer. But really, who can blame Spicer for this? All he's learned is that lying and living without a sense of shame win him celebrity selfies and cushy Harvard breakfasts. So why would he suddenly develop integrity now?


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