It's probably a little late for us to be surprised at the contents of a White House press briefing, but it needs to be re-emphasized: Sean Spicer's explanation of Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn's resignation doesn't make any sense. And that's a problem.
Spicer's narrative of events is quite specific. First, that Michael Flynn did absolutely nothing "wrong or inappropriate" in discussing Russian sanctions with "his Russian counterpart," which according to Spicer would have been within Flynn's "duties." Most specifically, Spicer repeated, there was no "legal issue" with the conversations.
The second part of Spicer's version of events: Even though Michael Flynn did absolutely nothing wrong during those conversations, his resignation stems from losing the White House's "trust" after repeatedly lying about those appropriate, legal conversations to other members of the White House, including Vice President Mike Pence.
That doesn't make any sense. Michael Flynn, one of the top advisers on Trump's security team, repeatedly went out of his way to mislead other members of the administration about perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill conversations with a Russian diplomat? He would eagerly risk scandal (and, in fact, his entire career) to give Mike Pence the run-around on a diplomatic conversation that, according to Spicer, was fully within the scope of Flynn's transition duties?
For what reason? Why was misleading Mike Pence important, here? Did he just do it for fun? As an act of contempt? Spicer could have gone with Flynn's own half-justification, suggesting that Flynn simply didn't remember the conversation very well and so misspoke to the rest of the staff, but Spicer very pointedly didn't do that, instead over and over framing the Flynn statements as cause for a presidential "loss of trust."
That doesn't fly. Michael Flynn would have to be monumentally destructive to set fire to his own top-level career in order to mislead Mike Pence for, apparently, giggles. The White House version of events doesn't add up.