Culture

Donald Trump Distances Himself From Sean Spicer’s Phone Checks: ‘I Would Have Done It Differently’

With each week — no, day — that passes, Sean Spicer’s job as White House press secretary becomes more fraught with controversy and complications. The past 48 hours alone have populated newsfeeds with stories of the former GOP spokeperson’s alleged attempts to organize pushback against stories on Donald Trump’s reported ties to Russia, and new measures against his own staffers to prevent media leaks. The latter, which involved Spicer requiring that White House staffers to “dump their phones” on a table for random checks, has already circled back now that Trump himself has entered the fray.

In addition to blaming former President Barack Obama for said leaks, Trump defended Spicer during Monday’s Fox and Friends interview. “Sean Spicer is a fine human being. He’s a fine person,” he said, adding: “I would have done it differently”:

“I would have gone one on one with different people. We don’t have a major leak process here, we have a major leak process in government. But I would have handled it differently than Sean, but Sean handles it his way and I’m okay with it. You don’t want to have this… We have, sort of, ideas. But don’t forget we have people from other campaigns, we have people from other governments. We got a lot of people here!”

Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade pushed Trump on whether or not his “different” methods for discovering the leaker (or leakers) would have involved Spicer’s methods. The president again said he would have done things differently, though when asked by Earhardt about checking staffers phones, he weirdly quipped: “There are things you can do that are a helluva lot worse than that, to be honest with you.”

Trump also alluded to his comments about blaming Obama and the previous administration for his White House’s ongoing leaks, noting his administration was populated by people from “other campaigns” and “other governments.” Seeing as how he hasn’t appointed his own picks to many of these roles, however, wasn’t brought up on Fox and Friends.

(Via Fox News)