Sean Spicer Resigns as White House Press Secretary After Objecting To Scaramucci Hire (cnbc.com)

CNBC reports: White House press secretary Sean Spicer abruptly resigned Friday after opposing President Donald Trump's appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director. The president asked Spicer to stay in his role, but Spicer said appointing Scaramucci was a major mistake, The New York Times, citing a person with direct knowledge of the conversation. NBC News confirmed the resignation with two people familiar with the matter. Spicer tweeted later that he will continue to serve through August. White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was said to have advocated naming Spicer as press secretary. The two worked at the Republican National Committee before joining the administration. Following Spicer's resignation, Priebus said he supports Scaramucci "100 percent," according to news reports.

Comments

Rather and the lack of skepticism

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a little silly to think that Rather knew the Killian documents were fakes-- believing that the documents were real killed all respect for him in his chosen profession. and made the capstone to his long career in television the fact that he was a dupe. The exposure of fake documents very plausibly led to George W. Bush's election, so if he ran with the story because he "hated George W. Bush", he did exactly the opposite of what was intended.

A more real interpretation, however, is that since the faked documents confirmed the worst of exactly what he already believed, he failed to use his journalistic skepticism and just ran with it.

The take-away lesson is to continue to be skeptical even when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe-- in fact, to be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe.

Or, in the words of scam-busters: "if it's too good to be true... it probably isn't."