Sean Spicer book - live reading: Former White House press secretary reveals life working for Trump

Donald Trump's mouthpiece is finally talking for himself.

Sean Spicer's book – The Briefing: Politics, The Press and The President – has just been published and offers and unprecedented look into the workings of the White House and its sometimes bizarre, often controversial relationship with the press.

And we will be reading the book live, just as it makes its way from the press itself.

It is the latest in a series of bombshell books detailing life inside Trump's White House. From Michael Wolff's incendiary Fire and Fury to James Comey's combative A Higher Loyalty, many of Mr Trump's foes and confidantes have attempted to peer inside the president's head and work out what is going on.

But Spicer's is the first major release from one of the president's allies. And what an ally he has been: Spicer was famous for defending Trump over and over, even when that meant outright lying or appearing to suggest the holocaust didn't happen.

Now the erstwhile press secretary and communications director will finally give his insight on working for Trump, and helping create the image of the president we have today.

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12:09

Spicer is now taking us through a series of problems that happened at one fateful CNBC debate in Boulder, Colorado. It has something of a farce:

 

He failed to stop the network asking a series of gotcha questions and running things like a live Twitter reaction during the debate.

 

He handed out tickets and green rooms on the basis of poll ratings. That meant that Trump had a swanky place to prepare while others had squalid little rooms. They blamed Spicer.

 

And then Rand Paul tried to get through a secure area without his credentials, and was chased by a security guard. Spicer got the blame.

 

Eventually all of that and more added up to the fact that the candidates' campaigns decided they would handle the debates on their own, without the help of the RNC.

 

He seems to be attempting to suggest that he wasn't responsible for all these problems. But it all adds up to be a little embarrassing: hapless little Sean, failing to do the one thing he needed to and making just about everyone fall out with him.

12:04

Spicer describes how Trump disrupted the campaign trail: saying the apparently unsayable and the previously unsaid, and attacking his opponents with nicknames that they couldn't shake off. (Spicer doesn't mention the more unseemly ways that Trump bucked trends, including the various accusations that have been made against him by women.)

 

Does Spicer think such a thing will ever happen again, though? No.

I am often asked if Donald Trump permanently changed campaign- ing. The answer is yes, but only up to a point. I don’t think we will ever again see a candidate like Donald Trump. His high-wire act is one that few could ever follow. He is a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow. His verbal bluntness involves risks that few candidates would dare take. His ability to pivot from a seemingly career-ending moment to a furious assault on his opponents is a talent few politicians can muster.

12:01

Early difficulties with Trump: he was the only one of the big candidates who refused to sign a pledge confirming that he wouldn't run as an independent if he lost the Republican nomination – a decision that would almost certainly have handed the Democrats a win. Spicer runs us through all the machinations of getting him to do so – which eventually paid off. (Though Spicer is telling the story it seems that he didn't actually have all that much to do with it, which is getting to be a bit of a theme.)

11:56

A long, long diversion into the various changes that were made to the way the Republicans chose their candidate. Most of them appeared to have helped Trump, though Spicer isn't actually talking about him here – it's unclear whether he is talking about it to give himself credit or make excuses, though it's probably somewhere between the two.

11:50

We're off on a long discussion of the racial dynamics of the Trump campaign. What fun! Spicer says that, yes, he didn't attempt to reach out to black, Hispanic and Asian voters – but he did reach out to the "forgotten men and women".

 

He did that because he learnt to do it while he was a hotelier, Spicer claims. While he was doing that he had "taken the time to get to know people who work on his projects" and understood the concerns of the little man, he says.

 

This probably isn't true: the Trump organisation has been in all sorts of disagreements with the people who worked on his projects, including a huge payout to undocumented Polish workers who worked in 12-hour shifts, without gloves, hard hats or masks to demolish the building where the Trump Tower now stands.

 

But it's a useful look into how the campaign thinks about itself, which is reaching out to "normal" people who the party elites had forgotten. "But now the forgotten men and women of America finally had a candidate who heard their concerns and whom they could support," Spicer claims.

11:44

The two clashed during this time, with Spicer seeking to undo some of the damage done by the controversial candidate. When they met, Spicer was concerned that Trump would remember his comments and hold them against him, but it's worth remembering how limited they were. There's two main times, which Spicer relates at length.

 

The first is when Trump announced he was running for president and said: 

"They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."

Spicer says that he was shocked – that, with all the work the party had done to win around Hispanic voters, it was "so far from our message that it was almost a parody".

But all Spicer ended up saying on behalf of the RNC was: "[A]s far as painting Mexican Americans with that kind of a brush, I think that’s probably something that is not helpful to the cause."

Then the same happened when Trump said that John McCain wasn't a war hero because he had been caught. (He was a prisoner of war for years and refused to be let go until all his fellow detainees were released too.) Spicer claims to be shocked by this, and so did his fellow Republicans. That statement, in the end, was a tweet:

"@SenJohnMcCain is an American hero because he served his country and sacrificed more than most can imagine. Period."

It's not clear if all of this is Spicer's attempt to put distance between him and the president. If it is, then the distance is measured in centimetres.

11:37

And here we are, back in May 2016, Spicer finally meeting Trump and "reality television becoming reality", as he puts it.

 

That fateful meeting happens on the plane dubbed Trump Force One – the blue jet that then-candidate Trump flew around in during the campaign. Spicer climbs up into the plane and settles in, ready to meet the man himself.

 

"Donald Trump gets a lot of ribbing in the press for the over-the- top decor of his homes, but I found the interior of his jet to be tastefully appointed—high-back seats of cream-colored leather, polished panels of cherry wood with spotless brass accents."

 

The plane takes off and the two finally meet. It seems like an amiable chat: "an easy conversation about the state of the race, the stories of the day, and what the media was up to", and one that makes Spicer feel upbeat. But he's not working for Trump yet – instead having to deal with his comments from the perspective of the Republican Party, which at least claims to be coming from a very different perspective.

11:16

2012 was, of course, a drubbing, and one that has mostly been picked over: Romney failed to fight against the Obama campaigns social media and campaigning prowess, and the Republicans lost. Much of this is retreading old ground. But someone is back in the picture, literally:

“So waddya think happened?”

Donald Trump sat behind his desk, hands resting on its surface. A bank of large windows overlooked Fifth Avenue, with a view down the street to a nice green corner of Central Park.

Inside, Donald Trump’s office was a mélange of helmets, boxers’ belts, trophies, plaques, and awards. The walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with framed pictures, most of them magazine covers featuring the visage of Trump himself. Trump had run out of room on the walls, so more framed pictures populated the space around the floorboard. His desk housed columns of memos and blueprints.

After the election, Reince had agreed to run for a second term as chairman, and I had agreed to stay on as communications director. Now Reince and I and the staff from the RNC finance department were in New York to meet with big, loyal Republican donors, one of whom resided in a tower that bore his name. We went to Trump Tower for constructive criticism and, we hoped, a large donation. Trump had been a big Romney supporter and was disappointed by his loss.

I told him that the Democrats had huge advantages in voter data and online messaging. He nodded and shot back an analysis of his own.

“Romney blew it,” Trump said. “He should have had me speak at the convention. He could have used me more.”

11:12

After his tour of duty is over, it's back to civilian life. (Spicer was offered a "follow-on" job in the Pentagon but turned it down because he loves politics so much.)

 

Civilian life now means joining the Republican National Committee's media organisation, and leading that operation.

During my first few months at the RNC, it felt more like working in a startup company than at a national, established political party’s headquarters. We were on a tight timeline to get out of debt and up to speed in time for the 2012 election cycle. We ran lean and mean, and our small but growing communications staff worked seven days a week, doing multiple jobs from operating the RNC’s own TV studio, to book- ing Republican officials on shows, to working with regional media and social media. We kept at it because we knew how much was at stake. Our purpose was simple: raise the money and build the team necessary to get Republicans elected and re-elected.

Our pump-priming investments worked. Led by Angela Meyers and the finance team, donor support for the RNC grew, and we went from a barebones RNC staff of just over eighty to more than 250 at headquar- ters by election day in 2012.

We were still not where we needed to be—the timeline was too short for us to match what the Democrats had—but we had built and cemented a strong team that could offer significant help to the next Republican presidential candidate.

And we all know who would that turn out to be...

11:09

Another brief excursion into something else as Spicer relates his time as a Navy reservist. Which includes a visit to Guantanamo and a little description of just how much of a good time the prisoners are having there:

I was struck by the way our country treated suspected ter- rorists, accused of some of the most heinous crimes. They enjoyed twenty-first century comforts such as satellite television, a full library of DVD selections, healthcare, sporting gear, and a soccer field. These accused terrorists were receiving better treatment than many Americans will ever experience—and their accommodations were being footed by the American taxpayer. There are American veterans—who wore our country’s uniform and deployed to lands far away, leaving families behind, to fight on the front lines of wars—who are living on the streets, wondering where their next meal will come from or how they will receive healthcare. Yet here were these suspected terrorists—the most heinous of them all—living in very comfortable conditions.

Worth remembering that the place is a torture site and that it has been accused by the UN of conducting interrogation techniques that are still banned under international law.

But it's true of course that most people in America won't have access to healthcare, as Spicer suggests. He was part of an administration that has rolled back what small efforts there have been to introduce some system of fair provision in the country.

11:02

I can't quite work out what Sean Spicer thinks his personal brand is. Like this bizarre digression about going to watch a horserace:

The Gold Cup is held in a scenic meadow in the hills not far from the farm estates of Middleburg, Virginia. It’s the kind of event where people dress up in their “Sunday best” to sample delicacies and cham- pagne in tents sponsored by luxury car companies and other corporate sponsors. Many spectators, including myself and my friends, used it as an excuse to drink in the middle of a Saturday.

You know, a real Sean Spicer kind of place.

Is he being sarcastic or not? I have no idea! What is a Sean Spicer kind of place? Somewhere where you drink in the day? Or is he not one of those people? No idea.

In reality, of course, Sean Spicer's brand is actually Melissa-McCarthy-as-Sean-Spicer. Most people know him as a belligerent buffoon played by a woman on a sketch show. That's why the impression was so bruising to him, I suppose.

11:00

Another sprinkle of references to the future:

 

1) Mike Pence appears, as part of some work that Spicer was doing as a junior GOP staffer. It turns out that Pence was going to interfere with the plan he had for budget messaging, which makes Spicer angry.

 

"I’d like to say I handled this coolly. I didn’t, and my eruption got back to Pence. Most people in politics don’t worry about things like that. I do."

 

Later, Spicer would apologise to Pence:

[Pence] looked surprised.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re doing a great job.”

That is classic Mike Pence.

Classic Mike Pence.

 

And 2) "While Melissa McCarthy later made fun of me as the angry press secretary, the truth is that I hate to lose my cool. I have too much Catholic guilt to berate people and feel good about it."

 

Spicer is clearly still stinging about McCarthy's impression of him on Saturday Night Live. It keeps coming up at the most bizarre moments, and each time it is an anecdote that somehow suggests the impression was incorrect. (But it usually isn't.)

10:55

A strange thing about this book is that Spicer clearly knows that the only thing people care about is what he knows about Trump, what he did for Trump, and at a push what he thinks of all that, he is desperate for that not to be the case. We're into his time as a young Republican Party hopeful, now, and there's not very much very interesting to say about any of it.

 

Occasionally he gestures back towards Donald Trump. (This whole discussions was prompted by him marvelling at the fact he was in a room with Trump, despite their different backgrounds, so now we get to hear about his background.) But there's a lot of waffle here, which I'm skipping through, which is why we're moving at quite a rapid clip.

10:42

With that*, the end of chapter two.

 

* That including a whole load of waffle I skipped out about going to college and interning, etc. If you're really interested in Sean Spicer's life as a student and a political intern then you should buy the book, which is out today with Biteback Publishing and can be bought on Amazon now.

10:39

Into Spicer's college years, and they are mostly as dull as his childhood so we'll spend some time skipping over those, too. But there's this bizarre package in which he appears to mock Melissa McCarthy for never having considered learning Japanese, unlike he did. (He did not actually learn Japanese, you'll note.)

 

Many alarmist books at the time insisted Japan would soon surpass the United States economically, and everyone would live in a Japanese-dominated world. So, learning Japanese was, I reasoned, a smart investment for my future.

As soon as I was admitted to Connecticut College—a small, liberal arts institution with a campus that has that classic, gray-brick, New England look—I immediately set my sights on being a Japanese language major. (Imagine that on Saturday Night Live. I wonder how good Melissa McCarthy’s Japanese is.) Then I encountered Japanese, with its subject- object-verb sentences, its three scripts, and the most complex gram- matical structure of any language. It wasn’t long before I received a letter from the dean suggesting that my talents should be invested elsewhere

10:30

I promised there would be no childhood stuff – no Comey-esque stories of bravery and honour and how I found my principles in the authentic and rough American dirt. Well, that was an alternative fact of my own. We're into Spicer's childhood and it's all turning out fairly dull, so I'll just give you the top lines:

 

• Raised Roman Catholic
• Dad was not very political: given to complaining about "idiots" in local or state government, but it was "never ideological or based on party"
• Grew up in a "tiny town in a small state"
• Childhood sounds like something from It or Stranger things: "We played four square in the street, rode our bicycles everywhere, and played tag with flashlights when it was dark"
• Dad sold yachts
• Later he would learn about how tax is bad because the government decided to tax luxury yachts

So we do get the whole "where I learnt my principles" stuff. Spicer writes that "the experiences of my adolescence were shaping me into the conservative I am today". But it's a lot less highfalutin' than Comey's principles, for example: Spicer's are that he doesn't like politics and doesn't like taxes, which makes sense I suppose.

10:24

Spicer's account of the mood inside Trump's campaign on election night is entirely at odds with Michael Wolff's. In his book, Fire and Fury, he wrote that many of the team not only didn't expect Trump to win but probably didn't even want to.

 

Spicer says that Trump was "optimistic from the word go, but he grew more excited as one critical county after another swung his way"; as the result becomes clear, "Donald Trump’s trademark grin filled his face" and the team always thought they would win, he writes. 

10:22

With that resignation, we're back into the proper flow of things. And we start with the days leading up to the election. (That's also where the Michael Wolff book began, too.)

 

We begin with a survey of all the people who doubted Trump. There's shouts to: Nate Silver, the New York Times, Newsweek, Deadspin. The latter claimed that "Donald Trump is going to get his ass kicked", Spicer writes.

 

"On Tuesday, November 8, election day, I saw Donald Trump and he looked nothing like a man who was about to get kicked," Spicer writes. (A confusing sentence given it was his ass that was supposed to be kicked, but then I suppose Spicer evaluating the kickability of the president's ass would be a strange way to start a book.)

10:19

Finally, Spicer is resigning. He heads to his office and prints out this letter:

 

Dear Mr. President,

It has been an honor to serve in your administration as White House press secretary.

After considerable reflection and discussion with my family, I have decided to pursue other opportunities. To ensure a smooth transition, I will work through the end of next month.

I will continue to support your efforts to strengthen the U.S. economy, create American jobs, and fight the evils of terrorism. Thank you for keeping our country safe, defending the foundation of our great democracy, and Making America Great Again.

He hands it to Trump, who initially rejects it. But eventually he is won around and takes Spicer's resignation, with a surprisingly amount of kindness.

"I thanked the president and calmly walked out of the Oval Office knowing that I had made one of the biggest decisions of my life," Spicer writes. "I have seen a lot of sides of Donald Trump—tough talking negotiator, political pitchman—but that day I saw another. He was caring, kind, and gracious."

10:17

(Here's one little aside: Donald Trump talks very fluently and fluidly in this book. For instance:

“Anthony, as I was telling the team yesterday, we need new blood,” the president said. “We’re getting killed in the press. We’ve got to do anything we can to get back on track.”

Does that sound like the Donald Trump we all know and probably don't love? It doesn't to me.)

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