by Sean Spicer
Again, a silly question if you’re a Capital Beltway journalist. I was soon fielding questions from Skype reporters who actually asked about things that millions of overlooked Americans cared about. I thought this was a good thing, but many in the mainstream press did not.
According to Politico’s Ben Schreckinger, one of the sins committed by this larger group of journalists occurred when President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were asked a question about national security, instead of about General Michael Flynn’s resignation (over his misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak). “Trump and Trudeau were instead asked questions about trade and border security,” Schreckinger opined.
Why the “instead”?
While questions about the resignation of the NSC director, Michael Flynn, are appropriate, why is a truly substantive and relevant question, in the context of a joint press conference between the U.S. president and the Canadian prime minister, allegedly out of line?8 The reporter who asked the question—Kaitlan Collins, then of the Daily Caller—was eviscerated by her colleagues. After that, I noticed her reporting became more aggressive and more in step with the “mainstream reporters” in the Press Briefing Room. She now works for CNN.
Back in April 1999, Jeff Zeleny—then of the New York Times and now of CNN—asked President Barack Obama the following question during a presidential press conference: “During these first one hundred days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?”
CBS News reported Zeleny’s question as a “light moment” in the press conference while his colleagues met the question with “laughter.”9 The differences between how the media covers Republicans and Democrats are pretty clear.
At one joint press conference, the media accused the president of not having a headset on to listen for translation—the problem was that he was wearing a single earpiece with a single cord rather than the headphone headset the media had been issued. So, rather than ask for or check the facts, a quick tweet got sent from a reporter’s phone, establishing a narrative.
At the end of January 2017, the New York Times reported that President Trump had signed the executive order demanding a temporary halt, and eventual enhanced screening, for foreign visitors from seven countries where terror networks are prevalent—the so-called “Muslim travel ban”—before then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly could be fully briefed.
Josh Rogin of the Washington Post—an opinion writer—wrote that Steve Bannon had dictated policy, going over the head of the Department of Homeland Security, and then set up a damage-control, 2:00 a.m. phone call with then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Rogin never contacted me or anyone in the press shop about the story or to check his facts.
Neither the New York Times story nor the Washington Post story had any basis in truth. In the case of the Washington Post, I spent a good part of a day talking with its editors, and in the end, its story was “updated” twice, noting the newspaper should have called the White House prior to publication. The “update” was a way to get around saying they were wrong or admitting fault. I demanded a full correction which never came, but the paper kept Rogin out of commission for a week.
As for the New York Times report, Secretary Kelly had in fact been briefed multiple times on the “travel ban” and had directed his staff to amend the order as necessary. And the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel had vetted it and found it compliant with the law. As was so often the case, whoever leaked this story didn’t know what he or she was talking about. Secretary Kelly himself contradicted the New York Times’s reports on television interviews, but it was frustrating that we had to spend so much time knocking down false media reports that went viral.
This was par for the course. False reports in one part of the media spread through all the others like wildfire, and reporters never seemed abashed when they were corrected. The editors usually wanted the corrections kept quiet, the reporters adopted the attitude that “Oh well, these things happen,” and both groups focused on their game of gotcha in which any small error on our part was a headline and the countless errors on their part were barely acknowledged. In one briefing, I finally had had enough and said, “Oh, okay, so I apologize if NBC News’s reporting is based on the New York Times’s false reporting.”
I also wondered if the presence of cameras was an unhealthy influence on some journalists.
I wondered about this in early January, even before the inauguration.
That was the period when then FBI Director James Comey told President-elect Trump about the “Steele” dossier, a compendium of negative information about Trump and his associates compiled by a former British intelligence official, Michael Steele, for Fusion GPS—a private, opposition research outfit that was paid by a law firm employed by the Clinton campaign.
The dossier included an allegation that Donald Trump, as a private citizen, had visited Moscow, was filmed consorting with prostitutes, and was entertained when one of them urinated on a bed on which Barack and Michelle Obama had slept. If true, the tape would have supported the Left’s narrative that Donald Trump was being blackmailed and controlled by Russian intelligence.
At 2:00 p.m. on January 10, 2017, I received a voicemail from Jake Tapper of CNN. He wanted me to give him a call about a story. I called him back about an hour later, and he texted me, saying he was on-air and would touch base soon. Then around 5:00 p.m., Tapper said he was about to air a story on the Steele dossier. He gave me less than an hour to give a response. Considering the magnitude of the charges being leveled, that was not enough time to prepare a response. CNN reported that on January 5, during a meeting at Trump Tower in New York City, the heads of the intelligence agencies had briefed Trump about the dossier, and he had been presented with a two-page summary of the document. That did not happen. The summary was not ready when they briefed the president-elect. As the meeting with the four intelligence chiefs—Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers, CIA Director John Brennan, and FBI Director James Comey—was concluding, Comey asked to speak with Trump privately in the back corner of the room. By his own admission, he verbally briefed Trump on the allegation of the prostitutes in the hotel, and Trump cut him off quickly, denying it. CNN’s story, which highlighted the president-elect being handed a two-page document, was wrong.
I began a mad dash to actually get a hold of the dossier, which, was classified and not easily obtained, though it had already been leaked to the media. Before we could really do anything, CNN ran its story, and we had to play catch up. Ironically, CNN would go on to win an award for its reporting despite Comey telling Fox News’s Bret Baier in an interview that he never showed the two-page summary to Trump.
James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, later confirmed that the president was not shown the dossier but had been given a vague warning about it by former FBI Director James Comey. Not having seen the dossier, we could not respond to it. But then BuzzFeed published the whole lurid account.
Not only did we not have a copy of the two-page report, we had not even seen it. So, we called Mike Pompeo, then a congressman from Kansas who had been nominated to be the CIA director, asking him about how we could get a copy and requesting that he call us on a secure line to brief us on its contents.
One of the allegations in the dossier is that Michael Cohen, who worked in the Trump Organization and was one of Trump’s personal attorneys, had been in Prague to meet with Russian agents. I called Michael. He told me he had never been to the Czech Republic and on the day in question had visited his son at college in California. I asked him if he had his passport.
“It’s in my pocket,” he said. “I always carry it with me.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on my way home, a half-hour away.”
“
Can you come back to Trump Tower right now?”
“Are you serious?”
Michael Cohen came back. I asked to see his passport and personally verified that his passport had no stamps exiting this country or entering another around the time alleged in the Steele dossier.
But at this point, the media was ready to run with anything. With CNN and BuzzFeed, no matter how many facts we debunked in this manner, the burden of proof remained on us to continue to disprove the next allegation. In short, a newly elected president was getting sandbagged by reporting on baseless gossip on the eve of his inauguration.
We held a press conference on January 11 in Trump Tower. The president-elect asked me to deliver a statement calling out CNN and BuzzFeed for their erroneous reporting before introducing him to reporters. The president-elect called BuzzFeed “a failing pile of garbage” and denounced CNN for “going out of their way” to promote the dossier allegations without investigating their veracity.10
Here is where the cameras came into my thinking. In that press conference, Jim Acosta went into a rage, red-faced and shouting at Donald Trump. President-elect Trump refused to call on him, calling him “fake news.”
Acosta—who had covered Hillary Clinton’s campaign in relative obscurity—had quickly improved his visibility by becoming dramatic and hyperbolic on the air. At the end of that press conference, I told Acosta he was rude and disrespectful to the president-elect. He said that he thought the president-elect had been rude and disrespectful. He went on-air immediately after that, saying that I had threatened to kick him out of the press conference, which simply was not the case. And the president’s anger at the media’s endless stream of baseless, partisan rumor-mongering was just beginning.
While their facts were wrong, the media had a point about the rollout of the so-called “travel ban.” One problem with disruption is that it can disrupt itself. The executive order on travel had been coordinated by Stephen Miller, an engaging fellow who would not bridle at the description that, at age thirty-two, he is an old man trapped in a young man’s body. He had been Senator Jeff Sessions’s communications director and came into the Trump campaign through an early alliance between the senator and the candidate. In short order, Miller demonstrated an uncanny ability to capture Trump’s voice—and thus, win his ear. So, when Stephen Miller led the effort on the executive order, he captured the president’s intentions to a T. A poll from Rasmussen Reports found that 57 percent of likely voters favored a temporary ban on refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen until the U.S. government could do a better job of vetting them.
While we ran the executive order through the proper channels to have it reviewed, we did not anticipate all the legal traps liberal, activist judges invoked to stymie it, in part because we were not yet fully staffed and did not have time to do that sort of analysis or the experienced hands that might have helped guide us to the smooth implementation of complex policies like this.
I knew Steve Bannon as the force behind the Breitbart News Network. Using money from Rebekah Mercer and other big donors, Steve had frequently unleashed Breitbart to attack the RNC as a den of out-of-touch, political elitism. After enduring a few broadsides, I had asked Steve for a meeting to see if I could get him to cool it down a bit. When we met, Steve and I found we shared some experiences in common, including our working-class backgrounds and service in the Navy. Next up was furthering an understanding between Reince and Steve, who shared more goals than they might have initially realized. As they got to know each other better, Breitbart eased up its criticisms, at least a bit.
The core principle of Bannonism—as expressed through Breitbart, which remained his mouthpiece even when he was in the White House—is to tear down establishment Republicans. That is his number one priority. In the White House, I learned something else about Steve Bannon. He is adept at playing the populist angle while also maintaining deep back channels to the very mainstream journalists he publicly denounces. Despite all of his talk about draining the swamp, Steve Bannon was an expert navigator of every cove and eddy.
His most consummate skill, though, was as an inside, political knife fighter. Steve somehow won the acquiescence of incoming National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn to give him a voting seat on the National Security Council (NSC). Many senior staff attended NSC meetings, but to have a vote was something else. And to give a vote to a politically oriented staff member was unprecedented.
Donald Trump was blindsided by the decision and the firestorm of criticism that ensued. The president was furious and called both men into the Oval Office. At that moment, Steve deftly turned to General Flynn in front of Donald Trump and said, “I thought you had run this by the president?”
The mainstream media narrative that the new administration was in chaos gained considerable traction from the embarrassingly short tenure of General Flynn as national security advisor. I had come to know General Flynn during the campaign. He was always well-dressed, buttoned-up, and never had a hair out of place, the quintessential, former three-star Army general. Moreover, he had grown up in Middleton, Rhode Island. We developed a quick and easy relationship, but the one sticking point was that, during the transition and the early days of the administration, I found it nearly impossible to get information out of Flynn’s office. The short-lived tenure of Fox News contributor Monica Crowley as his communications director didn’t help.
During the transition, the media claimed General Flynn had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on more than one occasion—contrary to what Flynn had told me, Reince, and Vice President Pence.
I questioned Flynn about it again, and he quickly pulled out his phone to show me a text message to Kislyak, wishing him a happy new year and offering his condolences for members of the Russian Red Army Choir who had died in a plane crash. Flynn convinced me that the media was chasing a non-story. Vice President Pence and I gave flat-out denials that General Flynn had any important contacts with Russian officials.
But then in a high-profile interview with Adam Entous of the Washington Post, Flynn implied that he had conducted more extensive conversations with the Russian ambassador.
General Flynn’s evolving account of his Russian contacts—and the fact that he had misled us—sank his credibility as national security advisor. The president promptly fired him. It was a painful decision for the president because he liked and admired General Flynn and valued his counsel. Flynn was later indicted for lying to FBI agents about whether he and Russian officials had discussed the prospect of lifting economic sanctions. From what I understand, having conversations with future foreign counterparts was well within the bounds of his responsibilities. But there is no question that he was wrong to mislead the FBI and others, particularly considering the level of trust our government places in his position.
There is also no question that some in the media got this story wrong.
In December 2017, after I had left the White House, ABC suspended its “investigative correspondent” Brian Ross for reporting that General Flynn was ready to testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that presidential candidate Donald Trump had directed him to contact the Russians. In fact, it was President-elect Donald Trump who had instructed General Flynn to initiate communication with the Russians. That is what incoming presidents do. Moreover, such contact occurring after the election had nothing to do with “collusion” and everything to do with a president-elect preparing to stake out his foreign policy.11
In the quick-draw culture of the media, Ross’s story spread like the proverbial wildfire. Even when the story was reported correctly, the breathless tone of the media overlooked the fact that it was entirely appropriate, indeed expected, that someone named to be the national security advisor should be in contact with foreign governments.
After General Flynn’s departure from the White House, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes reported that Vice Admiral Robert Harward had turned down an offer to become the new national security advisor. Harward did
so, according to MSNBC, after he saw the president’s performance in a press conference.12 I had to clean up that impression in a briefing in which I relayed what I knew to be true—that Vice Admiral Harward was deeply enthusiastic about working in the administration, that he had financial and family concerns that precluded him from accepting, and that he wanted to be kept in consideration for future opportunities in the White House.13
The same sort of issue occurred around the nomination of Phil Bilden to be secretary of the Navy. Major Garrett of CBS News reported that Bilden would be revoking his name from consideration. After talking with Phil, who said the report was not true, Major Garrett challenged my credibility when Phil ultimately withdrew his name over a week later. On February 28, Phil sent me a note that read, “I want you to know that you were factually correct when you reported ‘those people would be wrong’ in response to the CBS rumor. I was 100 percent committed and fighting the OGE [Office of Government Ethics] hard then. It was not until Friday 24 Feb that I decided to withdraw, realizing then the fight would waste valuable time and money and delay President Trump having a SECNAV in office.”
This was just another example of the relentless negativity—and selective use of facts—with which White House stories were being reported. When I asked a Washington Post veteran about reporters calling out other reporters in stories, she said the “higher-ups” get very skittish. Think about that. They treat that kind of news—news about their peers—very differently than all other kinds of news.
President Trump wanted to get a lot done right away. We had an aggressive agenda. Perhaps inevitably, given our inexperience and the shrill opposition of the Democrats, the media, and even some Republicans, we had our fair share of stumbles, mistakes, and embarrassments. We could produce incredible results one day and fall flat on our face the next. In February 2017, for example, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled a tentatively planned trip to Washington after a testy phone call with President Trump. Peña Nieto wanted President Trump to publicly renounce his promise to “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.” Trump refused. That was the issue—a matter of policy—not, as some in the media reported, that Trump had insulted the Mexican president.14