Plusgood doublethink duckspeaker, ungood suitpicker

There's a nasty strain of flu going around, and now that Yr Doktor Zoom is on the mostly better side of it, we can offer you one very important bit of advice should you get the blasted thing: Do not watch White House press briefings while you're still stricken, or you'll think you're in the grip of some horrific fever-induced hallucination. Not that Sean Spicer makes any more sense when your brain isn't slightly broiled, but we had to go back to bed Wednesday after Spicer's latest bizarre spin on the raid in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL and an 8-year-old American citizen, as well as multiple injuries among the American attackers, an unknown number of civilian deaths, and a total loss on a $70 million war machine. Asked if he still considered the raid a "success," given all the details that have come out about the many things that went wrong in the operation, Spicer played the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel Card:

Wow. Spicer: Anyone, including John McCain, who says Yemen raid wasn't a success does disservice to slain Navy SEAL's life & owes an apology pic.twitter.com/baPCRc88wT — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 8, 2017

“It’s absolutely a success,” he said, “and anyone who would suggest it’s not a success does disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens. He fought knowing what was at stake in that mission, and anyone who would suggest otherwise doesn’t fully appreciate how successful that mission was, what the information that they were able to retrieve was, and how that will help prevent future terrorist attacks.”

You know what else was a success, by that metric? The American defense of Benghazi. Why does Donald Trump hate the late Christopher Stevens, and the four brave Americans who died there?

In response to a follow-up question noting Sen. John McCain had criticized the raid's apparent lack of planning, Spicer added, "Anybody who undermines the success of the raid owes an apology and a disservice to the life of Chief Owens." We're pretty sure nobody really owes Chief Owens a disservice, but Sean Spicer certainly gave him one anyway.

It's such perfectly Trumpian logic: Of course it was a success. If you think it was poorly planned or executed, you have dishonored the brave SEAL who died due to our poor planning and intelligence. After all, since a brave American died, the operation has to have been a success, because brave Americans never sacrifice themselves in failed missions, do they? Maybe under Barack Obama, a known loser, but not in the Trump era, because Americans are winners now, and don't you ever forget it.

John McCain had said Tuesday he'd have a hard time calling a "success" any raid that results in the death of a soldier, multiple injuries, and the loss of a $70 million Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Why does he have such contempt for the life of Chief Owens, huh? McCain replied later Wednesday to Spicer's idiotic comments, noting that it's entirely possible for military actions to fail despite the heroism of those involved:

We might also refer Mr. Spicer to Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," which is all about the heroism of soldiers who rode to certain death even though they all knew the attack was hopeless, and that "someone had blundered." Or perhaps we should now re-label that monumental waste of life a success, because the dead guys were so brave?

Haha, we are joking of course. Donald Trump won the election by a historic landslide, so the Yemen raid was a success, and anyone who says otherwise, like the military sources who said nearly everything went wrong and that the operation went forward "without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations" is a loser who hates America. Lord Dampnut explained why John McCain is so blind in a series of tweets today:

See? This clusterfuck of a mission that may or may not have recovered some al Qaeda computer disks was a huge success, and to suggest otherwise emboldens the enemy, who will now think that shooting back is an option, one they hadn't previously considered. When is John McCain going to be charged with treason, already?

Suggestion to the White House press corps for today's 40-minute Hate: Ask Sean Spicer if the fact that many Americans served bravely (other than John McCain, who got captured) means that we actually won in Vietnam. Maybe we should go back to Hill 937 and take their Hamburger.

Even better, maybe point out that even chickenshit cowards end up winning sometimes, narrowly, because the universe is funny that way.

[ThinkProgress / Mediaite / The Hill]