Twenty-two minutes after the Labor Department released the first jobs numbers of the Trump era, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer jumped on Twitter to celebrate. In so doing, he may have broken a federal rule prohibiting Executive-branch employees from talking about economic numbers for an hour after their release.
The rule, as the Times points out, was adopted in September of 1985, with Ronald Reagan in the White House. At the time, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs said the purpose was to “preserve the distinction between the policy-neutral release of data by statistical agencies and their interpretation by policy officials.”
The tweet from Spicer, who has an uncanny ability to find banana peels to step on, seems like a clear violation of this rule. Lock him up?
Or maybe cut him a break. When you’re have trouble putting your American-flag pin on the right way, life must be hard.
