White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s contempt for the press is well-known. His press conferences are unhinged assaults against the fourth estate, while he plays nicer behind closed doors with the racist, misogynist fringe outlet Breitbart. Just this week, the Trump team began emboldening rape apologist Mike Cernovich, with the president’s own son tweeting this morning that Cernovich should win a Pulitzer.
Meanwhile, Spicer referred to actual Pulitzer-winning outlet ProPublica yesterday as a “left-wing blog.” For context, Spicer was asked about ProPublica’s recent report that the flimsy firewalls set up between President Trump and his flimflam business empire were being steadily removed, such that he could continue to profit from them while ostensibly serving the American people. ProPublica, for its part, is an esteemed non-profit journalism outlet that produces important but often dry deep investigations necessary to the function of journalism in a representative democracy. We could go on, but, well, ProPublica’s response to Spicer does it all much better.
After which it goes on to detail its work being a royal pain in the ass to the Obama administration, as is the sacred duty of all good investigate reporters, before concluding:
It’s the rare (shiver) tweetstorm that actually serves a purpose, both splaying out ProPublica’s methodical, no-nonsense brand of journalistic probity and raising awareness of the swift erosion of Trump’s separation between his business interests and, you know, those of the American people. It also makes clear just how far afield Spicer, and the administration he represents, truly is: They consider reality a left-wing concept. If those are the stakes, we’re all radicals now.
You can support ProPublica here.