It's the little things, as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was reminded on Friday.
Spicer entered the press briefing unaware that the American flag pin on his lapel was upside down.
As Spicer spoke to the media, Twitter quickly spiraled into flag pin jokes. Was Spicer in distress? Or was it a subtle promotion of the coming season of House of Cards?
"There's no promo," he said, smiling and fixing the pin's orientation after a reporter brought it to his attention.
Hours earlier, Spicer apparently violated a decades-old federal rule that prohibits executive branch officials from commenting on the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report within an hour of its release.
The tweet, which came 22 minutes after the BLS report was made public, violated a 1985 rule that states "employees of the Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release time."
Asked about his premature tweet, Spicer channeled Saturday Night Live from the podium. "Don't make me make the podium move," he said grinning in a reference to the Melissa McCarthy "Spicey" Spicer character on SNL who uses the rolling podium to chase after reporters.
Tweeting numbers that were already widely reported on TV and Twitter would not disrupt markets, Spicer said, saying he understood the rule's aim was dealing with "market fluctuations."
"We're excited to see so many Americans back to work. I apologize if we were a little excited," Spicer said.
The White House jubilation at the 4.7% jobless rate and 235,000 new jobs added last month means that numbers portrayed during the campaign as a "hoax" have now become an accepted economic measure by the administration.
"I talked to the President prior to this," Spicer said. "And he said to quote him very clearly: 'They may have been phony in past, but it’s very real now.'"
