Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:54 pm
The White House tried to blame Donald Trump calling his Muslim ban a ban on the media by claiming that Trump was only repeating what he had heard in the press.
Video of Press Secretary Sean Spicer:
WATCH: White House: Pres. Trump is using the word "ban" because the media is using the word "ban.@kwelkernbc: "Those are his words." pic.twitter.com/hu10yUB9Q5
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— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) January 31, 2017
Spicer was asked why the White House continues to claim that the Muslim ban executive order is not a ban when President Trump says it is.
He answered, “He’s using the words that the media’s using. At the end of the day, it can’t be….it can’t be a ban if you are letting a million people in. If 325,000 people from another country can’t come in, that is by nature not a ban.”
Press Secretary Spicer was asked if he was confused or the President was confused because Trump called it a ban.
Spicer answered, “No, I’m not confused. I think the words that are being used to describe it are derived from what the media is calling this. He has been very clear that it is extreme vetting.”
The White House was trying to blame the media for the President Of The United States calling his Muslim ban a ban. It is not the media’s fault that Trump called his own Executive Order a ban. Sean Spicer himself has also called it a ban.
Following Spicer’s thought process, President Trump is like a child who learned and repeated a bad word, while watching television. The Press Secretary’s answer was an admission that Trump lacks the discipline to stick to his own message. The more likely answer is that Trump was calling the Executive Order what it is, and the due to public outrage, the White House is trying to spin the ban out of the Muslim ban.
Either way, the laughter that could be heard in the briefing room when Spicer tried to blame the media was proof that blaming the press for teaching President Trump about the word ban is not going to fly.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
