Thanks to Sean Spicer’s Air Quote Presser, It Will Now Remain ‘President’ Trump

Well, as Ana Navarro unhappily pointed out in the wake of a nor’easter that dumped snow on the Mid-Atlantic states,

“The Swamp did not freeze over. Light dusting of snow in DC. We can now go back to focusing on spying home-appliances & Trump-Russia ties.”

All joking aside…well, not all joking:

Maybe we should all get rid of our kitchen appliances cuz according to kellyanne Conway everything is used to spy on US .😂😃😁😀😅 pic.twitter.com/LSOKnpiili

— RogelioGarcia Lawyer (@LawyerRogelio) March 13, 2017

But it’s not all fun and games. There is the little matter of how we’re supposed to take Donald Trump’s utterances.

From the very beginning, his various surrogates and spokespersons have been trying to explain his words away and it has become literally impossible to tell when he means what he says or is only just saying it.

Because air quotes. Trump used them during the campaign. Sean Spicer is using them now and telling us Trump’s use of quotation marks are air quotes. Because “wiretapping” is different from wiretapping.

Guantanamo prosecutor Col. Morris Davis offers a solution: emoticons.

.@realDonaldTrump / @POTUS should use 😜 to mark his "just joking" tweets & 😡 for his "this probably sounds crazy, but it's no joke" tweets. https://t.co/fPXUSEgjAn

— Col. Morris Davis (@ColMorrisDavis) March 14, 2017

That’s one possibility. However, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) had an alternative approachto this nonsense:

Dear 'fake' White House @PressSec @seanspicer: a 'lie' by 'President' @realDonaldTrump is still a lie. https://t.co/Y2BCpwaHOv

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) March 14, 2017

And George Takei agreed, which is enough for most of us:

In honor of Sean Spicer's latest idiocy, whenever I talk about his boss I'm just going to refer to him with air quotes, too: the "President"

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 13, 2017

The people have spoken. The Trump administration is a joke. And that, my fellow Americans, is no “joke.” Unfortunately, as Joy Reid said, it’s a joke that is “Neither funny nor acceptable.”

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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