Sean Spicer's revenge

I’m not a fan of tit-for-tat policies. To be sure, sometimes there’s no good alternative. For example, what’s the alternative to tit-for-tat when Democrats vote as a bloc against GOP Supreme Court nominees? To not respond in kind to their nominees will tilt the highest court in the land unfairly in favor of the Democrats.

Too often, though, tit-for-tat produces a race to the bottom — one that undermines the integrity of our institutions and cheapens our society.

But the tit-for-tat I’m going to write about here is too harmless, and in my view too delicious, for even a fuddy-duddy like me to find objectionable.

Sean Spicer was Donald Trump’s first White House press secretary. Two years after he left that post, Trump named him to the Naval Academy Board of Visitors.

In September 2021, Spicer received a note from the Biden White House, via Katherine Petrelius of the White House personnel office. It offered him a choice. He could resign from the Naval Academy advisory board or be fired by Joe Biden — that very evening. Russell Vought, who now serves as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, received a similar letter.

Spicer did not resign. Neither did Vought. Accordingly, Biden removed both from the Naval Academy board.

Spicer’s term was set to expire in just three months. By removing him, Team Biden was truly giving him the finger.

To add insult to injury, Jen Psaki, who at the time held Spicer’s old White House job, defended the firings by implying that Spicer and Vought were not qualified for the board.

Spicer, who served in the Navy Reserve for more than two decades and has a degree from the Naval War College, did not take kindly to this comment. He decided, along with Vought, to sue the administration over his removal.

They understood they would lose in court. However, they hoped the defeat would clear the way for future Republican presidents to remove Democrats from the various boards to which they would be appointed. As Spicer explains:

The idea was what can we do to codify a future president’s power, so in the future we can say, ‘It was Joe Biden who gave us the power to do this.’

With the election of Donald Trump, Spicer’s tit-for-tat moment arrived. A few days before Trump’s inauguration, Spicer wrote a New York Post opinion column. The piece was called “Biden booted me off a nonpartisan board — precedent for Trump to clean house.”

Spicer included a description of the types of boards filled by presidential appointment where the house cleaning could occur. He mentioned only one by name: The Kennedy Center.

Sure enough, on February 7, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was firing multiple Kennedy Center board members and making himself chairman. One of those fired was Katherine Petrelius, whom Biden had placed on the board. She’s the former Biden White House official who had sent Spicer and Vought emails “asking” them to resign from the Naval Academy Board of Visitors.

Unlike Spicer, whose background made him well qualified to be on the Naval Academy Board, Petrelius’s qualifications for the Kennedy Center board seem sparse. Her background prior to working in personnel at the White House was:

Director of development at the Biden Foundation from May 2017. Northeast finance director at the DSCC, Mar. 2014-May 2017. National finance director at Joe Kennedy for Congress, Feb. 2012-Mar. 2014. West deputy finance director at the DSCC, Mar. 2011-Mar. 2012. Finance associate at 4C Partners, LLC, Sept. 2009-Feb. 2011. Finance assistant at the Public Justice Foundation, May 2008-Sept. 2009. B.S. in political science and government, French from Drew University, 2008.

Any connection to the arts must have been purely coincidental. Perhaps she participated in a school play.

Unlike so many subjects of Trump’s house cleaning, the Kennedy Center is not resisting the firings of Petrelius and the other board members. When the Washington Post asked why, the Kennedy Center responded by pointing to a lawsuit: Sean M. Spicer, et al v. Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States, et al.