Milbank: Spicer’s butchery of English language unforgivable

Just the other day Spicer pronounced it “Bissaa al-Ashar,” as transcribed by my colleague Erik Wemple.

Spicer’s struggles of the tongue make me believe his Nazi talk wasn’t a premeditated offense but a lost connection between brain and mouth. If you’re spokesman for the president, that’s not entirely reassuring.

Whatever the cause, Spicer’s miscues are an international sensation. In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald has a widget to “Spicer-ize” your name. Mine is “Danai Mildred” and Spicer’s is “Searby Spiedler.”

GQ put together a video with an A-Z list of all the words Spicer invented on the White House podium. Highlights: Althewise, Drung Prices, Esigdesigejucation, Grobe, Inimpulintation, Kabalkabul-twi, Lasterday, Memererenrderm, Plarm, Transerptation, Wintofrom.

Some might think it unsporting to mock Spicer for his problem, but he did the same when he was with the Republican National Committee and Michelle Obama identified Iowa’s Bruce Braley as “Bruce Bailey.” “First lady botches name of Dem Senate candidate,” he tweeted.

As Spicer might say: What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gardener.

Phenomenal and robust

His mishaps on the podium are legendary. The inaugural crowd “was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.” Trump’s unfounded claim that millions voted illegally are “based on studies and evidence that people have presented to him.” Trump’s equally dubious claim that President Barack Obama had a wiretap on Trump Tower: “The president used the word ‘wiretap’ in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities.”

Thrice in January, Spicer referred to a terrorist attack in “Atlanta,” presumably meaning Orlando, 400-odd miles away. He has been portrayed to such devastating effect by Melissa McCarthy on “Saturday Night Live” that even now, when he shows up to briefings in jackets that fit, he sometimes appears to be imitating McCarthy imitating him.

Wemple believes Spicer’s collection of “spurts and blurts and polemical dead ends” is evidence that “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Wemple notes his tendency to say “at the end of the day” for just about every purpose. After Politico noted that Spicer uses “phenomenal” to describe everything from the failed health care bill to U.S.-Mexico relations, Stephen Colbert put together a video of Spicer saying “phenomenal” set to the Muppets classic, “Mah Na Mah Na.”

I count him using the adjective “robust” in 17 different briefings, once producing this amalgam of Spicerisms: “I think the relationship with Mexico is phenomenal right now, and I think there’s an unbelievable and robust dialogue between our two nations.”

Way better than our relationship with Bashad al-Whatshisname.