The show’s host, Tom Bergeron, tweeted a statement Wednesday after the new cast of contestants, which includes former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, was announced.
Bergeron wrote that during a lunch with an executive producer for “Dancing With the Stars,” he had offered up some suggestions for Season 28.
“Chief among them was my hope that DWTS, in its return from an unprecedented year-long hiatus, would be a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from any party affiliation,” Bergeron wrote. “I left that lunch convinced we were in agreement.”
Bergeron didn’t mention Spicer directly, but, he noted in his post, the show’s producers decided to “go in a different direction.”
“We can all agree to disagree, as we do now, but ultimately it’s their call,” he said. “I’ll leave it to them to answer any further questions about those decisions.”
During the cast announcement on “Good Morning America on Wednesday, Bergeron cracked a joke about Spicer.
“The nice thing is, Sean will be in charge of assessing audience size,” Bergeron quipped, poking fun at the controversy over the crowd size at the 2017 inauguration of President Donald Trump.
The joke didn’t go over too well on social media, nor were some people happy with Spicer’s addition to the cast.
“None of this is funny. This man knowingly and blatantly lied to the American people in his official capacity as a government servant of the people,” one person tweeted. “He helped create the atrocity that is still in office. Shame on ABC.”
CNN has reached out to Spicer for comment.
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