No one told Karamo Brown rule No. 1 of joining the #Resistance: You are not allowed to talk to anyone from the Trump administration, and you are definitely not allowed to call a former official a “good guy.”
Brown, who stars in Netflix’s Queer Eye, will be joining former White House press secretary Sean Spicer on this season’s Dancing with the Stars. When a reporter from Access Hollywood asked Brown about his competition, he took the opportunity to share a pitch for civil discourse.
“Sean Spicer and I have been talking,” he said. “I was most excited to meet him because people would look at us and think that we’re polar opposites, but I’m a big believer that if you can talk to someone and meet in the middle, you can learn about each other and help each other both grow. And so we have been chatting all day today, like he’s a good guy, really sweet guy.”
Who gave you permission, haters? #QueerEye‘s @Karamo is defending his fellow #DWTS contestant Sean Spicer: “He’s a good guy.” ❤️️ pic.twitter.com/A1wDdFFZi2
— Access (@accessonline) August 21, 2019
Realizing that his comments might come off as strange to some, he added, “Karamo from Queer Eye saying Sean Spicer a nice guy, I know.”
All he said was that he and Spicer had shared a cordial conversation, but even that is too much kindness for those who see the Trump administration as the nation’s greatest evil. As expected, Twitter blue check marks went ballistic.
Get a fucking grip. There is no friendship with people who enable fascism.
— roxane gay (@rgay) August 22, 2019
Karamo what? This man is complicit in, and continues to defend all the actions of the Trump adminstration. You can’t just say he’s a good guy now until he’s been held accountable. pic.twitter.com/y2kLVfDBm6
— Ashly Perez (@itsashlyperez) August 22, 2019
Hey, @Karamo! Did you and Spicer talk about his complacency in the Trump administration and how he was willing to power through to represent Trump’s plan, or was your all day talk about surface level bullshit like what coffee to get at Whole Foods and how we’re all, like, human?
— Robin LeBlanc, from work (@TheThirstyWench) August 22, 2019
It’s pretty sad that you get this reaction from people just for trying to humanizing and (gasp!) talk to people you disagree with.
A year ago, Queer Eye fans similarly attacked Brown’s co-star, Jonathan Van Ness, for saying that not all Republicans are racist. He tweeted that we have to stop demonizing each other because “we gotta remember we are all in this together.”
As Scott Bledsoe wrote for the Washington Examiner at the time, “This wasn’t exactly a glowing endorsement of the Republican Party, but Van Ness was quickly reminded by his liberal fan base that even these types of consensus-friendly statements are not welcome — anything short of condemning all Republicans is unacceptable.”
Now Brown is in trouble for talking to Sean Spicer because we should all be petty, apparently. If there’s no room for civil discourse, our society is only going to get worse.
