I haven’t bothered to cover Trump’s travels and travails abroad but this struck me as just really mean spirited and speaks volumes about Trump’s “temperament.”
Spicer’s absence in papal visit reveals Trump’s family-first rule
By Kevin Liptak, Jeff Zeleny and Jeremy Diamond, CNN
The most visible moment for White House press secretary Sean Spicer on President Donald Trump’s first foreign trip this week was a moment of invisibility.
Spicer fumed to colleagues after being excluded from the President’s meeting with Pope Francis, an administration official told CNN on Thursday. He was eagerly anticipating meeting the Pope, but discovered at the last minute that he was not on the shortlist of White House officials selected to join the President for the private audience.Spicer assumed he would be on the list, the official said, adding that meeting the Pope was one of the bucket list items Spicer, a Catholic, wanted to check off during his tenure as press secretary. [..]Standing alongside the President as he met the Pope inside the Sala del Tronetto here were his wife, Melania, dramatically veiled in lace. To her right, eldest daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared, each senior Trump advisers and near-constant presences in Trump’s close circle. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster — Trump’s highest-ranking foreign policy aides — stood flanking Francis.Those were the expected faces. But there were others there, too — less familiar yet nonetheless critical to the West Wing ecosystem. Hope Hicks, Trump’s communications adviser; Keith Schiller, his former bodyguard; and Dan Scavino, his social media master, all stood solemnly as Trump greeted the Pontiff.
No matter what your opinion of Sean Spicer is, his exclusion by Trump was just really nasty.