White House won’t budge an inch on Holocaust and that’s deliberate

Like his boss, the hardnosed flak seems incapable of admitting a gaffe. Unlike his predecessors, though, Spicer views scuffles with the press as a way to win points with the public. There’s no better primer for this phenomenon than the current controversy over Trump’s Holocaust statement.

If a press secretary, say Robert Gibbs or Ari Fleischer, had released a statement commemorating the Allied liberation of Auschwitz but failed to mention the Jewish victims by name, they’d probably clarify.

Pressured by the media, they might even call it an unfortunate gaffe, an unintentional oversight, or an embarrassing error. The script’s simple: Chalk it up as a rookie mistake. Correct the record and move on.

But Spicer won’t be repeating those lines. Adhering to a different strategy, he took the opportunity to attack the press.

When they asked why the president couldn’t summon the words anti-Semitism or identify the 6 million Jewish victims, the flak accused journalists of “nitpicking.” And instead of taking punches, he doled them out. Spicer actually praised his boss for “going out of his way to recognize the Holocaust” as if issuing a brief 117-word statement was some sort of magnanimous gesture.

Spicer isn’t naïve. He’s deliberately goading, fueling, encouraging media outrage. Then in a stunning display of public relations jujitsu, the press secretary uses media attacks to gin up support among his base.

Never mind that white supremacists will take Trump’s silence as credence for their denial of the Holocaust. Disregard the coming speculation about the leader of the free world’s supposed anti-Semitism. And forget the damage done to the institutional reputation of the White House.

If the press secretary can arouse a little more outrage in some of this boss’s more unstable supporters, then that’s a win.

Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.