That Spicer comment about not signing onto healthcare is being taken way out of context

Spicer actually assigned more credit to the White House, not less, for the GOP healthcare bill that was pulled last week after it became clear it wouldn’t pass a floor vote in the House.

A reporter asked the following question during Friday’s press briefing: “Is the White House going to write it’s own proposal here [on tax reform], or is this going to be like the healthcare debate where we thought we were going to see a proposal from the White House but, in the end, the president sort of signed onto [House Speaker] Paul Ryan’s proposal?”

Spicer responded: “First, I would dispute that we signed onto someone’s plan. I mean, we worked with the House, as you know, from the president’s statement, we were very on board. I would suggest to you to say that we signed onto a plan – I would say it was a plan that both sides worked together on. We worked with the Senate as well.”

This is where the apparent communication breakdown between the press and the White House occured.

Politico’s Burgess Everett tweeted, “Spicer on health care: ‘I would dispute that we signed onto a plan.'” And through this game of telephone, a statement by Spicer saying Trump had done much more than merely “sign on” to the effort came to mean the exact opposite to the end user.

Considering Trump’s past support for the failed American Health Care Act, the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act, the press secretary’s reported comment seemed like an outright lie.

Journalist Twitter responded quickly with a mix of ridicule and confusion (this author included).

Everett eventually tweeted the press secretary’s comment with more context added.

The clarification came only after the original tweet made it sound as if Spicer had tried to disown the ACHA Friday. Spicer didn’t do that. He did the exact opposite of that.