The Briefing

by Sean Spicer

  This first pool spray would be brought into the Oval Office to see the president signing his first executive actions and orders. The plan was for him to show and explain the executive actions and orders he was signing; it would be a great story to demonstrate how the administration was hitting the ground running.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

  The routine is the pool comes in, takes pictures, captures video and sound, annotates what the president says, and provides a summary of the event, which occasionally includes some background color about attendees and the surroundings.

  Zeke Miller, then a reporter for Time and now for the Associated Press, was part of the pool and was ushered into the Oval Office. After the event, Zeke tweeted that a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed.

  Every president puts his own stamp on the Oval Office—and Donald Trump famously gave prominence to a painting of Andrew Jackson—but Trump had not removed the bust, and he never intended to. Zeke Miller had just missed seeing it and leapt to an unwarranted conclusion. This seemingly small detail ignited a social media firestorm that insinuated the president was repudiating civil rights. Zeke didn’t comment on the drapes or the rug but focused on this for a reason: he knew it would “make news.” The tweet generated hurt feelings, even fear. This was not the start we were planning. It reaffirmed the way the media has been transformed: by believing that being first and sensational is better than being right. The problem is that, once tweeted or reported, a breaking story begins the narrative, and no correction ever has as much impact as the initial report, no matter how wrong it is.

  When the story broke, Reince rushed to the Oval Office to snap a picture of the bust. He sent it to me to share with the media.

  When I had pointed out to Zeke that the bust had been there all along, he tweeted that it had been “obscured by an agent and door.”

  It was the door’s fault.

  Aren’t reporters supposed to be more careful?

  When confronted with an obvious mistake, I found many White House correspondents are quick to excuse themselves with a quick, “Oops, let’s all move along—next?”

  Unfortunately, Zeke’s post set the tone. The president had not even completed his first full day in office, and the media was playing gotcha. Never mind the executive orders—which were the serious, real, substantive news of the day.

  I’ve known Zeke for a few years, and he’s a good, decent person. The problem isn’t him, it’s the mindset of the press corps, the competition to get the first tweet or a viral clip, and an extreme ideological bias. It’s not good for journalism, and it’s not good for democracy.

  After putting out that media fire, I raced back to the hotel to change into my tux and join my family—Rebecca, my mother, brother, sister, and sister-in-law—at the inaugural balls.

  Saturday morning after inauguration day, just as Rebecca and I were getting the kids up, my new White House phone rang. It was the White House operator. The president was on the line.

  “Sean, have you seen the news?”

  I hadn’t because our kids were watching TV, and six-year-old kids don’t watch inauguration coverage.

  The president had one particular story on his mind: a panel discussion comparing the Trump inauguration to that of President Obama’s first inaugural. They were saying that the Trump crowd was noticeably sparse by comparison. The president was clear: this needed to be addressed—now.

  I had planned Monday to be “day one” for me as White House press secretary, and I never expected our second major controversy, after the Martin Luther King Jr. non-story, to be about crowd size at the inauguration. I had two suits hanging in the hotel closet. They were okay for most occasions, but I wouldn’t have called them camera-ready. Still, a suit, a blue shirt, and a tie—what more did I need? It wasn’t like I was going to be on camera.

  I planned to be a press secretary in the model of my predecessors—Ari Fleischer, Tony Snow, Dana Perino, Marlin Fitzwater, Mike McCurry, Robert Gibbs, Josh Earnest. I would get the facts out, articulate the president’s priorities and agenda, be forceful with reporters when necessary, and above all remember that I was serving the country that I love, all the while trying not to “commit news” myself.

  What could go wrong?

  Inauguration weekend is traditionally a time when political disputes are momentarily set aside. As RNC communications director in January 2013, when President Obama was sworn in for the second time, that was the approach I took. “This is President Obama’s day.” We stood down and made it about the country—inaugural weekend was when we celebrated the peaceful transition, or continuation, of presidential power after an election. Our role at the RNC in 2013 was to be the loyal opposition, to hold the president accountable at every opportunity. But on inauguration weekend, that could wait.

  It was a short walk to the White House from the W Hotel, but my mind was racing—this was a new administration, and I was a key part of that administration, and not all of us were sworn-in yet. And most staff hadn’t even been granted access to the buildings. That meant the press office was comprised of just Vanessa and me until more staff received their badges.

  While I knew the president wanted me to address the question of the crowds at his inauguration, when I reached my desk, I thought my real priority should be to highlight his executive orders that were focused on jump-starting the economy. I also had hoped for a dry run at the White House press podium, but there wasn’t time for that now. The press would be in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in a few hours, and I had work to do—first off, figuring out how to get accurate attendance figures for the inauguration.

  While I wanted to talk about the president’s policy agenda—thinking that’s how we should set the tone—I focused on the president’s point, that the media was making an issue of the inaugural crowd to belittle and disparage the incoming administration from the get-go. If we were to have any chance of fair coverage, if we were to stop the press from making a habit of being endlessly negative about the administration, it made sense to confront them now. I called Tom Barrack, a successful businessman and close friend of the president who had served as the chairman of the Inaugural Committee. His staff at the Inaugural Committee gave me some numbers, quoting the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia’s estimates of Metrorail ridership that day. But I didn’t have hard and fast stats on attendance, and as far as I could find out on a Saturday morning, no one else did either.

  I continued to dig, of course, calling the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior public affairs staff, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Secret Service. Almost everyone I talked to had the attitude of “It’s over, who cares?” They had all worked incredibly hard for months to make inaugural day a success. Now they were relieved it was behind them. The National Park Service told me that they had once collected inauguration numbers but had stopped because there was too much second-guessing. I knew many people hadn’t made it onto the National Mall at all because of the crowds. My own family barely made it through the long lines and delays at the security checkpoints. It had taken them more than two hours to get from the hotel to the Capitol grounds. There had been reports of extensive lines at each of the security-perimeter checkpoints that inaugural attendees had to clear before getting on the National Mall. That certainly could have diminished the crowds.

  I examined images on social media. There were aerial photographs of the National Mall, but they excluded people along the parade route and the checkpoints.

  Some calculations could be made. An estimated 250,000 people could fit in the area between where the president was sworn-in and Fourth Street. The area between Fourth Street and the media tent could accommodate another 220,000 people. Another 250,000 people could occupy the area from the media tent to the Washington Monument. Inaugural staff told me that an estimated 420,000 people had used the D.C. Metro system (compared to the 317,000 who had used the Metro for Obama’s second inauguratio
n). Based on these numbers, it seemed possible that President Trump had, in fact, a larger inaugural audience than Obama.

  While I researched, Reince called for updates, and I developed a plan for how to present the administration’s case. I knew the president appreciated a forceful press conference I had managed at Trump Tower on January 11. During that briefing, I had knocked down false reports from BuzzFeed and CNN and challenged the media directly, pushing back on their assumptions.

  I assumed that was the approach the president would want to see again: strong, aggressive, no questions.

  I was wrong.

  At 4:51 a.m., the president had tweeted, “Wow, television ratings just out: 31 million people watched the Inauguration, 11 million more than the very good ratings from 4 years ago!”

  From his vantage point when he was sworn-in and from the vantage point of everyone who was on that dais, the National Mall looked packed. But a rebuttal cannot be based on impressions. As I drafted my statement for the press, I still needed facts and figures to support the president’s assertion. As I thought about it, one thing was clear: technology had improved so much in even just the last four years, let alone the last eight, that it was far easier to watch the inauguration from almost any device, from anywhere around the world. Watching live events on Twitter, Facebook, or Periscope wasn’t possible eight years ago, and live viewing on a tablet or a phone was much more popular now. Twitter had announced that a record breaking 6.82 million unique viewers had watched the inauguration on its live feed.1 Fox News Channel’s ratings for the inauguration were off the charts. News websites reported record traffic, and CNN itself claimed almost 17 million live streams that day.2

  Regardless of the final numbers, it did seem clear that the press—CNN and NBC in particular—were creating a story where there was no story. So, I crafted a simple, straightforward statement: “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period—both in person and around the globe.” (I’m not sure why I have to always send these dramatic moments with, “period,” but I’m going to work on this.)

  I felt I had done the best I could. Still, I asked Tom Barrack to talk with the president and try to refocus him on the success of the inauguration rather than the numbers, especially when there was so little definitive information. The president respected Tom, and Tom made a compelling argument, but my orders from the president remained the same.

  I got the word that the press had assembled, the cameras were ready, and the lights were on. I gathered my thoughts before I stepped through the small door to the briefing room. At least, I thought to myself, a Saturday afternoon briefing on inaugural crowd size from a White House press secretary few people had ever heard of was not going to be big news. When this was over, I thought, I could get back to the important stuff.

  It was now about 4:30 in the afternoon. I was keyed up from my calls with Reince and the president. As I stood in my office, I felt like a boxer who gets the pep talk of his life in the ring corner and then rushes forward seeking a knockout punch. The first punch I threw connected, a solid blow. I denounced the media’s pettiness and reminded them of the non-story about the Martin Luther King Jr. bust being removed. I accused them of “deliberately false reporting,” trotted out some of the statistics I had acquired, and said photos that centered on the National Mall where white tarps on the grass highlighted large gaps between groups of people were “intentionally framed . . . to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the national mall.” I thought I had worded my statement in such a way to make my case, but I was even more certain that the media was trying to make an issue out of nothing. It was appalling that no elder statesmen in the media called on their colleagues to focus on more serious issues. Still, in retrospect, I should have lowered the temperature and not so broadly questioned the media’s motives. I left the room without taking questions because I was in no position that Saturday afternoon to talk about the president’s appointments or policies.

  The rest, you could say, is history. Fact checkers said my pants were on fire, fashion critics mocked my light gray pinstriped suit for the way it rode up my neck, and my first appearance before the media in the Press Briefing Room set an unfortunate precedent of a belligerent press confronted with an equally belligerent press secretary.

  I went back to my office, expecting an “attaboy” from the president; 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. Minutes later, the president himself called, and he was not pleased. And I started to wonder if my first day would be my last. In fact, as I drove past the White House gates that night, I wasn’t sure I’d be driving back in. In the end, I didn’t get fired, but that day did cost me a few thousand dollars. I immediately went out and bought four new—dark, well-fitted—suits ASAP. For weeks afterward, I would get emails and letters from tailors and personal stylists all looking to “help.” What a first day.

  But my not-ready-for-prime-time suit was the least of my mistakes. I had wrongly assumed I knew what Donald Trump wanted. Instead of bringing the White House press corps to heel, he had wanted a polished, nuanced argument defending his position. Every time the president had checked in with me, I had said like a good soldier, “We’re on it, Mr. President.” Instead, I should have talked with him more and understood exactly what he wanted me to do.

  I had made a bad first impression, and looking back, that was the beginning of the end.

  As I travel and speak around the country, people will walk up to me, wince sympathetically, and say, “Can I ask you something?”

  I nod, knowing what’s coming.

  “What did it feel like to see Melissa McCarthy play you on Saturday Night Live?”

  On the first Sunday in February, Rebecca and I were getting ready for Mass. She had gone to bed before me and awakened before I had.

  “Did you stay up to see SNL?” she asked.

  “No, I was right behind you. Why?” I wondered.

  “You are going to want to see the skit they did on you.”

  As usual we were running late, so I said I would watch it when we got back. We got in the car and headed to church.

  Throughout the hour, while I sat in church, I heard the buzzing of my phone. Glancing down, I saw the screen fill with text messages. As soon as church let out, I looked down with horror to find Twitter ablaze with my name.

  What was it now?

  At first, I feared something truly terrible had happened. I soon sorted out that I had been referenced the night before on SNL. Like most of my generation, I love SNL and grew up on the antics of Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Dennis Miller, Chris Farley, and Bill Murray. With tough jobs and kids to put to bed, Rebecca and I rarely watched it live, but it was set to record on our DVR each week.

  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. I had no choice but to laugh. Like many SNL sketches, I think they milked it too long, but there was no denying it was funny. In the sketch, McCarthy-as-Spicer sprayed a reporter with a Super Soaker. And sure enough, thanks to a friend, my office soon had a Super Soaker of its own.

  The sketches kept coming, but they didn’t bother me. When you play in the NFL, you can’t complain about getting tackled.

  Did the sketches bother the president?

  I wondered about that. But then, we were all in for SNL punishment—Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, and most of all, the president himself.

  After my poor debut on Saturday, I had stewed for the rest of the weekend, determined to set this right.

  My maiden conference was scheduled for Monday.

  By this time, my staff was coming on board, providing me with needed reinforcement. On Monday morning, I gathered with my deputy and assistant press secretaries, re
ceived their updates on each of their specific focus areas, and reviewed my script, written for me by the very capable Natalie Strom.

  Then I went through a pre-brief practice session with the staff, volleying questions and answers with my deputies. It felt like I was a freshman cramming for a final exam in a class I had barely attended.

  I walked out to the briefing room to face the harsh television lights. This time I was dressed for the part—dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. I think half the staff came in for that first one—both to support me and to see what would happen.

  I started with a humble joke about my predecessor, Josh Earnest, not having to worry about losing his title as “most popular press secretary.” I had a lot of news to present and take questions about. At the top of the agenda was the president’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement with almost a dozen other Pacific Rim countries, minus China. As an assistant U.S. trade representative for President Bush, I had helped promote the TPP as a good deal for working Americans. Now I was announcing our withdrawal from the TPP because President Trump believed it was hurting working Americans.

  It felt strange, but I reminded myself that I was a spokesman whose job it was to explain the president’s policies, not express my own opinions.

  I had a brisk set of announcements to make about the president’s meeting with leading CEOs in the morning and with labor leaders in the afternoon to discuss ways to create good American jobs. I described the president’s executive action of freezing hiring on non-military federal personnel. Beyond that were many high-profile personnel announcements—including the upcoming swearing-in of General James Mattis as secretary of defense and General John Kelly as secretary of homeland security.

  I hoped to convey the urgency with which Donald Trump was approaching the task of fulfilling his campaign promises. By any measure, that message got through.

  “If other new occupants of the White House wanted to be judged by their first 100 days in office, President Trump seems intent to be judged by his first 100 hours,” the New York Times reported. “No president in modern times, if ever, has started with such a flurry of initiatives on so many fronts in such short order.”3