Sean Spicer may be gone (from the White House communications team), but he certainly will not be forgotten.
The outgoing White House press secretary resigned Friday after news that New York financier and former Trump campaign fundraiser Anthony Scaramucci accepted the position of White House communications director.
Spicer has been a memorable member of the Trump administration ever since he made his first remarks from the podium of the press briefing room in January.
Here’s a look at the top five infamous Spicer remarks — that generated buzz, backlash or both — from the last six months.
1. Inauguration crowds
On day two of his presidency, President Donald Trump lashed out at media outlets over the size of his inauguration crowd during a visit to the CIA headquarters and after massive nationwide protests erupted against his administration.
“We had a massive field of people,” Trump said. “You saw that — packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I said wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out the field was, it looked like a million, a million and a half people, they showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there.”
Spicer backed up the President’s assertion.
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said.
Then, as CNN’s Brian Stelter reported earlier this year, Spicer’s statement went on to include “several specific misstatements of fact in addition to the overarching one.”
2. Russian salad dressing
“If the President put Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that’s a Russia connection.”
This was Spicer’s response to a question about allegations of Trump campaign ties to Russia. The comment immediately led to Russian dressing jokes on Twitter.
3. The Hitler comparison
When answering a question about Russia’s potential complicity in the Syrian chemical attack in April, Spicer made a Nazi Germany comparison.
“You had someone who was as despicable as Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” he said. “So you have to, if you are Russia, ask yourself is this a country that you and a regime that you want to align yourself with.”
He tried to clarify later in the briefing, but as CNN’s Chris Cillizza pointed out, “in trying to do so, he made it worse.”
“I think when you come to sarin gas, (Hitler) was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” he said, adding: “But in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns and dropped them down to innocents in the middle of towns.”
He then apologized in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“I was obviously trying to make a point about the heinous acts that Assad had made against his own people last week, using chemical weapons and gas,” Spicer said. “Frankly, I mistakenly made an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which there is no comparison. And for that I apologize. It was a mistake to do that.”
4. “Covfefe” explanation
Trump baffled the public after tweeting this in May: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.” The tweet went viral, with many speculating about its meaning.
When asked about the typo, Spicer said: “The President and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.”
5. Trump’s “tapes” tweet
When pressed about Trump’s tweet regarding possible tapes of conversations between then-FBI Director James Comey and the President, Spicer said: “the tweet speaks for itself, I’m moving on.”
Honorable mention
Spicer in the bushes.
This was not a Spicer quote, per se, but it was an unforgettable moment. The outgoing spokesman was absent at the podium the day of Comey’s firing. The Washington Post reported that Spicer was hidden “among” — not IN — “the bushes” out of sight of nearby TV reporters.
The news of Spicer’s whereabouts immediately sparked tons of GIFs, most notably a photoshopped GIF of Spicer’s head on cartoon character Homer Simpson’s as he slowly backs into the bushes to avoid discovery.
