Sean Spicer during an off-camera White House press briefing on July 17, 2017 (Getty Images)

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary whose combative press briefings became must-see TV as well as inspiration for an instant classic Saturday Night Live impression, is leaving his job in the West Wing. The NY Times reports that he “resigned on Friday morning, telling President Trump he vehemently disagreed with the appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.”

Mr. Trump offered Mr. Scaramucci the job at 10 a.m. The president requested that Mr. Spicer stay on, but Mr. Spicer told Mr. Trump that he believed the appointment was a major mistake, according to person with direct knowledge of the exchange.

After Spicer was being mercilessly parodied by Melissa McCarthy and mocked by late night talk show hosts (and questioned for implying that Syrian president Basher al-Assad was worse than Hitler and forced to literally hide from reporters in the bushes), President Donald Trump turned to Sarah Huckabee Sander, Deputy White House Press Secretary, to handle more briefings.

More recently, the White House press briefings have become off-camera affairs, leading to a Washington Post headline like, “Sean Spicer’s utterly clueless off-camera press briefing, annotated.”

The ultimate de-Spiceying of the White House has been on the radar for a while. Trump was reportedly upset with how Spicer, former communications director for the Republican National Committee, dressed and that the press secretary was being portrayed by a woman on SNL.

White House reporters surmised that Spicer was on the outs with the president because Spicer, a devout Catholic, was not part of Trump’s entourage to the Vatican.

Politico reports that the hiring of Scaramucci caused great upheaval in the West Wing, with chief of staff Reince Preibus and chief strategist Steve Bannon — along with Spicer — expressing opposition to him getting the high-profile job. A “top White House official” said, “This was a murdering of Reince and Bannon. They said Anthony would get this job over their dead bodies.”

In last week’s NY Times Magazine, longtime D.C. observer Mark Leibovich wrote about how the Trump administration has transformed the capitol and led the article with, of course, Spicer.

After I had waited 45 minutes, Spicer stepped out and apologized. In the same way that a dog can take on a resemblance to its owner, Spicer has acquired a swollen, hopped-up and somewhat persecuted countenance, as if he were the physical embodiment of a news cycle on steroids. Wattage, for better or worse, was no longer an issue for Sean Spicer, who has a legitimate claim to being the most well-known White House spokesman of all time. I told him that I would come back the next day and that I wanted to interview him. ‘‘No, you’re not,’’ Spicer said quickly. ‘‘Not on the record, you’re not.’’ Then, softening, he said he would consider it but that any spotlight trained on him would not be helpful ‘‘to my current status.’’