It's Getting Very Hard To Be Sean Spicer

In the midst of the crisis that was rapidly unfolding around him, White House press secretary Sean Spicer should have been more than capable of telling reporters hounding him for information about President Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey that there was no comment at this time and quickly regroup. Spicer should have been able to tell reporters that the situation was fluid and more information would be given to them in a couple hours, or something. At the very least, Spicer, at 45 years of age, could have simply said "no comment," walked away into the White House, and met with his team to figure out what they could logically say to make Trump's surprise firing of Comey more palatable.

He could have chosen to fly to the moon; anything would have been more professional and mature than hiding in the bushes and then insisting that anything he'd say couldn't go on camera, leading to Spicer and reporters discussing the rapidly evolving situation in near-darkness on the grounds of the White House.

When Spicer first started making regular slip ups, whether it was by referring to world leaders by the wrong name or wearing his United States flag pin upside down - or claiming that Hitler didn't use chemical weapons on his own people - it became something of a sport to openly mock him. Ask anyone behind any of the GIFs or memes that have come out almost since the man took on the job, and you'll quickly realize that making fun of Sean Spicer and his incompetence became a full-time job; Saturday Night Live certainly has done a good job mocking him.

However, when Spicer realized that after his interview with Fox Business was done, his path to his office was effectively blocked by reporters in such a way that there was no avoiding them, the world realized that suddenly, there was nothing terribly funny about the press secretary of the White House of the United States hiding in the bushes to have a quick meeting with the colleagues he had with him before confronting reporters.

Spicer couldn't even effectively respond to many of the questions asked of him. He frequently would refer the reporter asking the question to one government body or another to follow up rather than even attempting to respond. While this could be construed in some ways as a smart move on Spicer's part, since he's endured a lot of controversy in how he's answered questions in the past, it makes him look uninformed, if not uninterested.

Spicer is also insistent lately on using the term "tick-tock" to refer to timelines of various events, a phrasing which only serves to highlight his lack of maturity for this role.

When asked about how long Trump considered firing Comey, Spicer responded, “I don’t, I don’t ... I can look at the tick-tock. I know that he was presented with that today. I’m not sure what time."

Spicer has also used the phrase when discussing the recent raid against al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Spicer also told reporters that the current system of investigations is working just fine, although Attorney General Jeff Sessions has apparently recused himself from anything to do with the investigation into Russia's alleged role in the Trump campaign and the man leading the investigation has just been fired. When pressed about whether Trump would be meeting with Russian diplomat Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov, Spicer seemed evasive.

“We’ll see what the schedule says. I don’t — I just — I’ve been a little tied up,” he told reporters.

The meeting between Lavrov and Trump did indeed occur, and it appears as though only the Russian press was permitted inside the meeting, as it was Tass who provided the only footage of it. It's been suggested that while the Trump administration apparently saw Comey's firing and the Russian visit as two separate incidents that should be handled separately, others have viewed this as yet another strategic mistake by Trump.

“They view this as an uncomfortable distraction that pushes the Russia story up a few steps,” said Vladimir Frolov, a foreign-policy analyst and columnist. “It escalates the feeding frenzy.”

Frolov argued that the amateurish scheduling by the Trump administration is doing nothing to help the optics at play for Trump. Major news networks were continuing to show full coverage of the firing while news that the Russian news agency Tass would be likely the only press in attendance also escalated the buzz about the ties between Russia and Trump.

Spicer had no answers for reporters about the then-purported Lavrov meeting; instead, a scant 10 minutes after he quickly met with reporters, he thanked them and escaped to the relative security of the Trump White House.