Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer remains notorious for, as The New Yorker puts it, his “six months of routinely lying from the White House lectern,” which helped shape the president’s particular brand of “alternative facts.” As such, the news that he’d be joining the cast in this season of Dancing With The Stars season wasn’t horribly well-received—DWTS host Tom Bergeron, for example, hoped that the show would offer “a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate.” No such luck. And somehow, Spicer has remained on the show all the way through to last night’s episode five, the annual “Disney Night,” in which he proceeded to destroy beloved childhood memories of Toy Story’s Woody for us all. Can Tom Hanks sue fo character desecration?
Dancing With The Stars dance numbers usually have a high degree of difficulty to wow the viewers at home. Spicer’s clumsy quickstep with pro dancer Lindsay Arnold was at the lowest possible end of that scale; it looked like something your grandparents could pull off at after a few weeks of practice at the rec center.
Still, Disney Night was an emotional evening, with many of the dancers dedicating their performances to family members like their children (Queer Eye member Kamaro Brown’s The Lion King samba) and parents (former Fifth Harmony band member Ally Brooke’s contemporary dance to Beauty And The Beast). Spicer dedicated his dance to his father, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2016. People quotes Spicer as saying, “In 2015, my father got sick with cancer and we wanted to bring the whole family together to have that Disney experience to create a memory that will last forever, not just for me but for my children as well.”
After the emotional evening, the show announced that no one even is getting sent home this week, which means that we’re stuck with Spicer for at least one more DWTS round. But his Woody performance only received a 19 score out of 30, so with any luck at all, he’ll get eliminated shortly. His old boss is still campaigning for him though, because it’s obviously such a slow news week.
