The Briefing

by Sean Spicer

  My father’s immune system was highly vulnerable. And to make matters worse, the kids started getting sick, one after another. When my mother, the consummate caregiver, succumbed to the flu, we knew we had to get help.

  We also needed to isolate the sick kids. Rebecca and I searched online to find a nearby hotel (let’s just say that the choices on Route 6 in nearby Seekonk, Massachusetts, are limited). My brother, Ryan, and my sister-in-law, Emma, decided that she would drive their sick child back to their home in Scarsdale, New York.

  For my dad, we looked for home care, nurses, you name it, but none of these are easily found for a one-to-two-night, last-minute emergency. Thinking I was out of options, I remembered an old political buddy, Ben Marchi, who was now in the business of senior in-home care in Maryland. Ben called the Rhode Island franchise of the business and got us a night nurse—who turned out to be a godsend. We also called Father Barry Gamache, the pastor of St. Mary’s church in Bristol, Rhode Island, to administer the last rites; we didn’t know how long my father would live.

  Rebecca drove our kids back to our home in Alexandria, Virginia, sensing that it would be a matter of days before she would be called to return to Rhode Island. My sister Shannon and brother Ryan were at the house with my parents, so I decided to return briefly to New York to work with the transition team.

  The morning after I arrived in New York, I did a few television interviews and hoped to work through the day and take the 5:00 p.m. train back to Rhode Island. As I wrapped up a 9:00 a.m. interview, I got a text from my brother. He asked me if I could catch the next train.

  Given how busy I was, my first instinct was to ask him why—but in my heart, of course, I knew.

  I rushed to Penn Station and took the next train. The three hours between New York and Providence were long and tough, as I knew that life for my family, particularly my mom, was never going to be the same. Many memories of my father filled my mind. I recalled how, on election night, my dad had called to tell me how proud he was of me and our victory. I listened to the handful of voicemails I had saved that simply said, “Hi, it’s your dad, just calling to say, ‘Hi, I love you.’ ” In the coming months, often after tough days, I would put my headphones in my ears and play the voicemails to hear his voice.

  When I arrived at the train station in Providence, my uncle Paul Grossman was waiting for me. I tried to read his face to gauge the situation, but Paul didn’t know any new developments.

  When we got to my parent’s home in Barrington, it looked the same, but it was unusually quiet and had a somber air about it. I had a knot in my stomach, fearing that my father had already passed away and that I had missed my chance to say a final goodbye. But when I walked through the door, my mother greeted me with a long hug and sent me upstairs to see my father. He was barely conscious, but the doctors had told us that, appearances to the contrary, he could probably hear everything we said. So, I told him how much I would miss him and how I would try to keep making him proud. I made sure I told him how much I loved him, how proud I was of his fight against this disease, and how much I appreciated everything he did for me and our family. As he had previously requested, I assured him again that I would look after my mother.

  Just after midnight, the nurse woke us. My mother, Shannon, Ryan, and I gathered around my father, held his hand, told him how much we loved him, and said goodbye as he went to heaven.

  For nearly three years, he had fought through pain and fatigue so that he could work, sail, and travel with his wife. Even in declining health, he tried to spend every possible minute with his children and grandchildren. He absolutely cherished his grandchildren.

  I tried to compartmentalize my grief, and I suppose, in a strange way, the hectic demands of the presidential transition helped me in that regard—though repressed grief takes its own eventual toll. I was back taking daily press calls—and, one morning, a call I didn’t expect.

  It was from Donald Trump. He wanted to express his condolences. The sincere compassion and empathy in his voice was something I will never forget. I wish more people saw that side of him. Trump had built up an image of toughness; however, in private, I have seen many instances of empathy and kindness from him.

  My father’s funeral was on December 5, 2016, at St. Mary’s Parish in Bristol. Our longtime family friend, Father Gerald Hussey, presided over a beautiful Mass that celebrated my father’s well-lived life. One of my father’s only requests, which luckily we fulfilled, was that the music director at St. Mary’s, Michael DiMucci—whose voice is truly a gift from up above—sing at the Mass. After the Mass, family and friends, including several who had flown up from D.C., gathered at Agave Restaurant & Lounge (now called The Beach House), which overlooks the calm water of the Bristol Harbor, for some clam chowder and a cocktail. There were a few tears but mainly laughter as we all raised a glass to honor my dad.

  Dealing with the emotional impact of losing my father was not something I made time for. Within a day, I went back to New York to join the president-elect at a rally in North Carolina where he officially announced that Marine Corps General James Mattis was his pick for secretary of defense.

  Donald Trump was personally involved in the transition communications team and messaging, and he gave me a steady accumulation of responsibilities, clearly evaluating my performance along the way. I never had anything like a formal job interview; I had an ongoing on-the-job interview.

  During the transition, Jason Miller and I had been asked to draw up organization charts of the press and communications offices. So, it did not come as a shock when I was appointed press secretary on December 22 and Jason was appointed director of communications. I knew in my heart that I was better suited to take on the role of communications director, but the opportunity to stand at the podium was too tempting to turn down.

  There were times I wished my dad had lived long enough to see me at the White House, and there were times, I must admit, when I was glad he did not.

  Presidents, elected in November, originally had until March 4 to put their administrations together. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, impatient to get his New Deal policies in place, persuaded the nation to pass the Twentieth Amendment, moving inauguration day to January 20. For the candidate and his or her staff, there is no time to recover from the ordeal of the election. Given the difficulty every administration has in sorting itself out within that narrow window, I sometimes wonder if we would be better off moving the date back to March.

  Fortunately, Washington has a process for every problem. The presidential transition is an established institutional arrangement that over time—especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—has become much more formal (and government-funded) to ensure the world sees our continuity of government.

  As early as May 2016, Donald Trump had asked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to begin planning for a presidential transition. At the time, this was akin to being named mayor of the first colony on Mars. But Christie, who had been through a transition of his own as a two-term governor, took the task seriously and started building his transition team, including hiring veteran political consultants Ken and Keith Nahigian. The Nahigian brothers—with the help of Trump aides Andrew Bremberg and Bill Hagerty, the latter now ambassador to Japan—vetted top candidates for cabinet, department, and agency positions.

  Before election day, the government provided office space for both Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s transition teams, just down from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. The winner on election night would take over the official transition office spaces at the corner of Eighteenth Street Northwest and E Street Northwest, inside the old Department of the Interior.

  One of the Nahigians’ deputies, Anna Stallmann, went to E Street to visit the transition offices. When she was there, an official from the government’s General Services Administration (GSA) told her bluntly to make the most of her visit because she was not likely to see it again. Anna noted that the room set aside for the president�
�s spouse might as well have had a framed picture of Hillary on its desk, so masculine was its decor, as if the GSA fully expected Bill Clinton to be taking up residence as First Gentleman. Needless to say, the GSA, like the rest of the Washington establishment, was in for a surprise.

  But while Washington was seemingly paralyzed by shock in the aftermath of the election, the transition team prepared cabinet picks for Senate testimony and confirmation. Only one of Donald Trump’s picks, Elaine Chao, had been through the process before. We gave each nominee a “media Sherpa” to guide them through the process, and our team scoured social media, public statements, and family backgrounds to highlight areas where the media or Democrat senators might attack. We also matched potential surrogate speakers to rebut critics and highlight each candidate’s strengths.

  Inside our transition offices, a conference room was transformed into a mock Senate committee room—complete with similar lighting and staff members acting as senators. We even simulated disruptions by the likes of Code Pink. We grilled nominees in taped sessions that lasted up to two hours. We questioned them on their personal history and beliefs, and we quizzed them on the president-elect’s policy platform. Afterwards, we’d play back the tapes, critiquing not just what nominees said, but their body language and facial expressions. We were confident that by the time we finished the preparation work, they would be ready to face a real Senate panel and the hot glare of TV lights.

  In the end, all of Trump’s nominees got through with one exception—Andrew Puzder, his nominee for secretary of labor. Given the controversy surrounding the new administration and the unalterable hostility of Democrats (and some Republicans), our near-perfect confirmation score was cause for celebration.

  But Chris Christie would not be around to celebrate.

  Just after the election, the president-elect announced that Vice President Mike Pence would take over as head of the transition team.

  Christie was invited to remain as a member of the team, and Trump’s campaign staffers became the transition team. Christie’s removal had come at the worst possible time, leaving the transition team in limbo. Campaign staffers, still exhausted from the campaign, were now asked to help reorganize the transition. For better or worse the transition team had been focused on planning the key decisions we would need to make. The shake up would cost us valuable time as a new team was trying to get up to speed. While Trump was coming in with no government experience, the top staff had little if any senior executive branch experience. Neither Reince Preibus, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway, nor Katie Walsh had any real executive branch experience to speak of. Rick Dearborn, who had been Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff and had worked in the Energy Department under President Bush, and I were the only two who had served in the executive branch. But neither of us had served in roles that prepared us for a transition of this magnitude.

  Jason and I had to get down to work organizing a communications shop. We couldn’t wait for the leadership of the new transition to sort itself out. We started working immediately with Hope Hicks to plan the structure of the communications office of the transition as a first-draft of the eventual White House staff. We consulted previous administrations and began to place people into jobs we weren’t sure we had the authority to place. The Nahigian brothers—like all transition officials, unpaid volunteers—had set up a digital portal to receive and code resumes in interested job seekers. They and their teams of volunteer “experts” had created binders of potential candidates, as well as manuals for each office (the First Lady, legal, policy, press, vice president, national security) on office structure, procedures, and outlines of priorities to review.

  In our selections, we tried to choose people who had experience in communications. We had plenty of candidates and resumes from people who were long on loyalty, but short on experience. There was a list of people who thought they deserved a West Wing job but few who had the experience needed to get Trump’s ambitious agenda implemented.

  Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s first press secretary, reached out to Jason and myself and suggested that we start daily media briefings as soon as possible to feed the media beast, lest it feed on us. Josh Earnest, press secretary to President Obama, and Jen Psaki, the communications director, also reached out to me. I visited them at the White House and found them to be gracious and eager to share their time and counsel to ensure a smooth transition.

  While the transition office was technically in D.C., the real action was in Trump Tower—cameras staked out in the lobby made watching the elevators doors opening and closing must-watch television. The media, meanwhile, was obsessed with the continuous stream of potential nominees being led past the cameras to the iconic Trump Tower by Madeline Westerhout. It was a media gauntlet where reporters snapped at the slightest bit of news. On this chaos, we tried to impose order, themes and facts.

  When we weren’t at Trump Tower, we were off at Trump’s New Jersey golf club in Bedminister. Much like the elevator doors at Trump Tower, the golf club’s wooden door with its brass fixtures became the new show. Through the door to meet with the president-elect came and went luminaries like General James Mattis, Rudy Giuliani, Safra Catz, Ben Carson, Michelle Rhee, Mitt Romney, Todd Ricketts, and Bob Woodson. While I was impressed with many of them, two stood out: Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and his wife Michele.

  Patrick came to Bedminister at the invitation of his friend, the incoming Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to discuss his work to cure cancer and address many issues surrounding healthcare delivery and spiraling costs in the United States. Patrick is doing cutting-edge work in advancing a cure for cancer, and during our dinner conversation Michele offered to have him call my father’s oncologist at Rhode Island’s The Miriam Hospital, Dr. Howard Safran. As the dinner broke up, I left the second-floor room and called my mother, who was at her sister Joanne’s house, to let her know about Patrick’s work and offer. There are days when we can see God’s hand at work clearly, and that night was one of them. Here I was, excited to be spending a weekend with the president-elect as he crafted his new cabinet and government but all the while knowing my father was struggling. This, I thought, was the answer—the reason this all makes sense. Meeting people like Patrick and Michele and seeing their kindness and concern.

  During these long months of planning and anticipation, a pattern of leaks began to emerge from within the organization that would soon bedevil the White House. Announcements we were planning to make started appearing in the media before we were ready. In a foreshadowing of days to come, some people were up, some were down, was always unclear in the rumor cloud around the Trump operation. Everyone had a rumor, but only Donald Trump knew the truth.

  The walk from the W Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., to the northwest entrance of the White House grounds is just a few blocks. We had booked two rooms for ten Spicers on inauguration day. The hotel is known for its views of the White House, the Treasury Building, and the Washington Monument.

  It was exciting to join the thousands of Americans gathering in the nation’s capital to observe the swearing-in of the forty-fifth president of the United States. The morning of inauguration day, Rebecca and I attended services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, at the corner of Sixteenth Street Northwest and H Street Northwest, across Lafayette Square from the White House. It’s been called the “Church of the Presidents” because every president has attended the church at least once since it was built in 1816; most have attended services on inauguration day. Rebecca and I sat a few people away from the president-elect, Mrs. Trump, Rex Tillerson, Dr. Ben Carson, and other future cabinet members. We listened to inspiring Bible verses and an insightful sermon, reminding us about the awesome responsibility that each of us in that church was about to take on.

  After the service, Rebecca headed back to the W Hotel to gather the family, and I boarded a bus headed for the Capitol. After making my way through the crowd and security, I sat on the upper part of the dais, watching the swearing-in cere
mony and listening to the president’s dramatic speech. After that, it was lunch in the Capitol with the senior staff before we were whisked away to the White House to see our new offices.

  Every newcomer is surprised by how small and tight the West Wing is. The office of the press secretary is spacious by West Wing terms with a semicircle of a desk and a television set into a wall. The office also has the novelty of a working fireplace, something not found in most Washington offices. I was told that if I wanted the fire lit, I should call a GSA team to do it. I thought that was a typical Washington bureaucracy. I was a former Boy Scout. I didn’t need help lighting a fire. A few days into the job, I decided I should put the fireplace to use. Within minutes, the entire West Wing was filled with smoke, and the Secret Service was opening doors to ventilate the area. Apparently, the folks who light the fires also know about opening the flue!

  In the Roosevelt Room, my assistant, Vanessa Morrone, and I were given our White House issued phones and laptops. Then I was off to monitor the inaugural parade and help prepare our first “pool spray”—a rotating group of twelve reporters, covering print, TV, radio, and wire services, and photographers—who cover an event on-site and file a report that their journalistic colleagues can use.