Ari Fleischer gets job with Saudi LIV Golf, retires his annual 9/11 commemorative tweets
Ari Fleischer’s claim to fame was being the press secretary under President George W. Bush. In recent months he’s been the kind of mouthpiece who calls the leaked Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade “an insurrection against the Supreme Court,” and then stays super duper quiet when it becomes much more probable that this judicial branch “insurrection” came from inside one of the right-wing Supreme Court judges’ chambers.
Sunday was the 21st anniversary of the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Since Fleischer has been on Twitter, he has live-tweeted his experience that day, being one of a few White House staffers in Bush’s presence on that day. It’s a thing he has done every year since around 2011. Fleischer’s annual commemoration of 9/11 is followed by thousands with a mixture of thanks and criticism. On Saturday evening, Fleischer went to his Twitter account and wrote a thread that began: “For the last 10 years or so, I have live tweeted the events of September 11, 2001, sharing my perspective of what I saw standing at President Bush’s side for much of the day...” Fleischer explained that on the 20th anniversary, last year, he was unable to live-tweet his experience that day because he was in attendance at an event marking that fateful day down at Ground Zero in New York City. He then explained that he would also be missing live-tweeting again this year because he would be “on a plane.”
He added that he would no longer continue his annual commemoration on Twitter of the events of 9/11. “In truth, it is exhausting to relive the day. It wears me down to go through it, even though I am not the one who has suffered the most.” Fair enough. Except some people pointed out that Fleischer’s decision to stop using his social media account to try and highlight his dubious claims to fame and promote lame conservative talking points comes just three months after the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational Series hired Fleischer Communications to be their communications consultants promoting the new golf league.