Sean Spicer's book: 'I started to wonder if my first day would be my last'

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s forthcoming book, The Briefing: Politics, the Press and the President, to be published by Regnery on 24 July, includes scenes from inside the White House and other personal observations by Spicer that add significant context to episodes from the early Donald Trump administration.



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On the inauguration crowd episode

In his first news conference as White House press secretary, Spicer attacked the media for reporting that Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd had been on the small side. Despite photographs showing large stretches of the National Mall empty that had been crowded with people for Barack Obama’s inauguration, Spicer insisted that Trump’s inauguration had drawn the largest audience in history.

In his book, Spicer explains that he took the lectern under direct pressure from the president to shoot down the unwelcome news reports – and that Trump was unhappy with his performance.

“I went back to my office, expecting an ‘attaboy’ from the president,” Spicer writes. “Instead Reince was waiting for me and said the president wasn’t happy at all with how I had performed. He didn’t like my not taking questions. He thought I was hung up on the wrong issues. He wanted to know why I hadn’t run my statement by him.”

Spicer reflects on the moment as a potentially fatal stumble. “Minutes later, the president himself called, and he was not pleased,” he writes. “And I started to wonder if my first day would be my last.”

On Melissa McCarthy’s impression of him on Saturday Night Live

After Spicer’s performance in the Brady briefing room, actor Melissa McCarthy lampooned him in a Saturday Night Live skit, chomping gum, screaming at reporters and ultimately ripping the lectern out of the floor and charging with it at the media.

The impression made Spicer a national laughingstock – but in his book, Spicer reveals that he was laughing along too.

“Taking a deep breath, I went to the DVR and saw Melissa McCarthy wearing my suit, downing gum by the bucket (guilty as charged, but never at the lectern), and yelling at the media,” Spicer writes. “I had no choice but to laugh.”



On Hillary Clinton

While Spicer, who also worked for Trump during the presidential campaign, does not spend a lot of time in his book on Hillary Clinton, he does offer his analysis of where the Clinton campaign went wrong. His book includes a play-by-play analysis of the three debates between Trump and Clinton. Spicer accuses Clinton, whose campaign produced an unprecedented amount of material on the candidates’ policy views, of avoiding “the issues” in debate number one.

On Clinton’s fainting episode

Leaving a commemoration of the September 11 attacks at Ground Zero in New York in 2016, Clinton stumbled and had to be helped into a waiting van. She was taken to her daughter’s Manhattan apartment, where she later addressed the media on the sidewalk. Her campaign later revealed that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia and she canceled a trip to California.

In his book, Spicer writes that the Clinton campaign made a fatal mistake that day. “Had Hillary Clinton gone to the hospital right away, it would have been better for her,” Spicer writes. “At every turn, Hillary and her overly protective staff acted as if they had something to hide. Every email and Clinton Foundation scandal, every too-clever-by-half statement by the Clintons and their team, came together to define her in that moment as the soul of duplicity.”

On what it was like for him as a devout Catholic to be excluded from a papal audience

In May 2017, a Trump entourage including the president, the first lady, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and staffers down to the digital director, Dan Scavino, had an audience with the pope at the Vatican. But Spicer, a devout Catholic, was not invited.

In his book, Spicer describes the moment, and how he asked Scavino to carry rosaries to the meeting for the pope to bless. The book includes a picture of the pope blessing the beads.

“While I would have loved to be part of that papal audience, I had not expressed disappointment to the media or anyone,” Spicer writes. “In truth, I was incredibly humbled when Dan [Scavino] showed me a picture of the Holy Father laying hands on a silver tray of rosary beads.”

On ‘Holocaust centers’

At places in his book, Spicer simply admits to having made mistakes. At one news conference he attacked the Syrian regime by invoking Hitler, saying: “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” Asked by a reporter to clarify his remarks, Spicer struggled to articulate that the Nazis used poisonous gas to execute Jews at concentration camps, which he ended up referring to as “Holocaust centers”.

In his book, Spicer describes the sinking feeling he had as he felt himself in a hole and unable to stop digging. “What had I done. Holocaust centers?” he wonders.

The feeling deepens and deepens: “I read the body language of not only the reporters but also my own staffers along the side of the room. I was beginning to realize I had misspoken badly.”

On Anthony Scaramucci’s downfall

In his book, Spicer has only nice things to say about figures such as the disgraced former congressman Mark Foley, for whom he once worked, and the disgraced former cabinet secretary Tom Price. But one figure does capture Spicer’s ire: Anthony Scaramucci, the brash New Yorker whose hiring as communications director prompted Spicer’s resignation.

In his book, Spicer insists he did not feel vindicated when transcripts and audio of a phone call emerged in which Scaramucci told reporter Ryan Lizza that he was going “to fire every one” of his subordinates and declared: “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock.” Scaramucci lost his job soon afterwards.

“While alternating currents of outrage and amusement flowed through the White House in the aftermath of Scaramucci’s conversation with Lizza, I took great pains not to show any emotion and just keep doing my job,” Spicer writes. “Some people asked me privately if I felt vindicated. I didn’t need vindication.”