Still skating by. Sean Spicer received the lowest scores of the evening on the Monday, November 4, episode of Dancing With the Stars, but he managed to be saved once again — and did not even end up in the bottom two. Instead, Ally Brooke (who scored a perfect 30 with her paso doble) and Kate Flannery faced elimination, with the latter being the one sent home along with her pro partner, Pasha Pashkov.
“My reaction to Sean being saved, it’s frustrating,” judge Carrie Ann Inaba told Us Weekly exclusively after the show. “There are really great dancers being sent home, but that is part of our show. It’s always been the audience and the judges’ perspective. So I’m not — I can’t be mad at it, but it’s frustrating.”
Inaba, 51, pointed out that Karamo Brown went home the previous week despite getting six points higher than Spicer, 48, who has now had the lowest score four weeks in a row.
“We want the people to be involved, and this is the way they are voting,” she told Us. “It’s hard because sometimes I hear the feedback from the people. ‘Hey, why aren’t the best dancers staying in?’ Well, that’s up to you guys. I’m doing my job, right? And people need to vote. So, I just hope that those who are frustrated with this happening as well vote as passionately as the people who support Sean.”
The Talk moderator noted that she has “nothing against people that are supporting Sean because they’re voting passionately,” adding, “Kudos to them for bringing it to the table.”
Spicer’s time on the dance competition series has been controversial from the start. The day that ABC announced the season 28 cast in August, longtime host Tom Bergeron tweeted that he disagreed with the decision to include President Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary because he felt that the show should be “a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate.”
Spicer subsequently urged “a diverse group of people” to come together. “It will make this show an example of how Americans can disagree about politics and tune into good entertainment shows and keep their politics at bay,” he said in a statement to Us in August.
Brown, 39, also spoke out against the political aide’s casting, although they managed to develop a friendship once they started working together on DWTS.
“Sean is literally someone who I would’ve never thought I could be friends with, and I’m going to walk away from here calling him a friend,” the Queer Eye star told Us in October. “I don’t think Sean’s going to make it the end, but I’m proud of him … because he’s had fun every week, and I think he’s exceptional.”
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Kayley Stumpe
