The President and the Press: The First Amendment in the First 100 Days
April 12, 2017, at the Newseum’s Walter and Leonore Annenberg Theater
Session 3: Conversation With White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer
Greta Van Susteren: / Good morning everyone.Audience: / Good morning.
Greta: / Sean, good morning
Sean Spicer: / Good morning.
Greta: / Sean, let's start with yesterday. The Holocaust situation, question. Your thoughts today?
Sean:
[00:00:30]
[00:01:00] / I made a mistake. I mean, no there's other way to say it. I got into a topic that I shouldn't have, and I screwed up. I mean, and I hope people understand that we all make mistakes. I hope I showed that I understand that I did that and that I sought people's forgiveness because I screwed up and I hope each person can understand that part of existing is understanding that when you do something wrong, if you own up to it, you do it. You let people know, and I did. For me, I mean obviously there's two takeaways. One is it's a very holy week for both the Jewish people and the Christian people, and this is not to make a gaffe and a mistake like this is inexcusable and reprehensible.
[00:01:30] / Of all weeks, this was not, this compounds that kind of mistake. But second of all, and ... First of all, it really is painful to myself to know that I did something like that, because that obviously was not my intention, and to know when you screw up that you possibly offended a lot of people, and so I would ask obviously for folks' forgiveness, to understand that I should not have tried to make a comparison. There's no comparing atrocities, and it is a very solemn time for so many folks, that this is part of that. That's obviously a very difficult thing personally to deal with because you know that a lot of people who don't know you wonder why you would do that.
[00:02:00]
[00:02:30] / That's first and foremost, and then secondly, just from a professional standpoint, it's obviously disappointing. I think the President's had an unbelievable couple of weeks. He took very decisive action in Syria, he's made tremendous progress with President Xi and his visit to China, and your job as the spokesperson is to help amplify the President's actions and accomplishments and I think he's had an unbelievable successful couple of weeks. When you're distracting from that message of accomplishment, and your job is to be the exact opposite, on a professional level it's disappointing because I think I've let the President down, and so on both a personal level and a professional level, that will definitely go down as not a very good day in my history.
Greta: / Did the President say anything to you last night or this morning?
Sean: / I did not talk to him. I haven't talked to him this morning.
Greta: / Any message through anyone else in the President?
[00:03:00]
Sean: / I don't get into private conversations. Again, this was my mistake, my bad, that I needed to fix, and so I'm not going to get into any additional conversations that I may or may not have, but I will just say this was mine, mine to own, mine to apologize for, and mine to ask for forgiveness for.
Greta: / Turning to other issues, do you think the press is fair to you or gunning for you?
Sean: / I don't think it's monolithic. I think some folks clearly have an agenda, some folks are open-minded and some folks probably root for you, but there's a spectrum.
[00:03:30]
Greta: / What's a surprise in the job for you? I mean, you were over at the Republican headquarters for a number of years. What's a surprise in this job?
Sean:
[00:04:00]
[00:04:30] / I don't know that there's a ... I mean, I think the level of scrutiny is obviously ... I wouldn't say it's a surprise, but the magnitude to which it exists is fairly unbelievable. No matter what you do, what you wear, it gets amplified to a degree that you couldn't imagine. I also think what the priorities are about what gets covered, what doesn't get covered, I think and the obsession with some of the process, which I always understand. I've been doing this for a long time, I understand process, and I understand ups and downs, but I think when you look at the issues that our world and our country are dealing with, sometimes the obsession with who's up and who's down in one week, or who said what in a meeting, versus the substance of what's being taken to improve the lives of the American people or to protect us, or to deal with world incidents is intriguing.
Greta: / Do you have a sense you work for the President, for the White House, or for the American people? Who do you think you're working for?
Sean: / Well to some degree, it's all.
Greta: / How do you reconcile that? Because sometimes, you're in a position of advocating for ...
[00:05:00]
Sean:
[00:05:30] / At the end of the day, the President won an election that the American people voted in, and so I ultimately answer to him. It is his agenda that is being pursued. That's the case of anyone who's in elective office, that you are elected by a group of people and you pursue an agenda that you feel that you communicated to those people, or accountable to those people, whether or not you brought it up during a campaign or not. First and foremost, it is the President that my job is to go out there and help amplify and discuss what he's doing and why he's doing it, and the accomplishments that he's having.
Greta: / How much access do you have to the President?
Sean: / Plenty. That's not a problem.
Greta: / I mean, do you talk to him every day? Spend time with him every day?
Sean: / Every day.
Greta: / How does your day start?
Sean:
[00:06:00] / I get up around 5-5:15, I start reading email and then usually try to do some kind of exercise, and then again, we're monitoring the news of the day, the issues of the day, going over what the events are. We have meetings early, in the seven o'clock hour, and then we basically are just trying to figure out what we're advancing, as well as what the incoming is, if you will. What are the issues that are playing hot? What are the issues that we think are going to overtake the day? What are the events that are happening and how we're going to communicate those.
Greta: / In terms of dealing with the media, I assume you get complaints in the media, right? One or two?
Sean: / One or two.
[00:06:30]
Greta: / What are the complaints you get from the media?
Sean: / There's always going to be an issue with access. They want more.
Greta: / Access to you or access to the President?
Sean: / To everything. I mean, it doesn't matter. To the parking lot, to the front line, trees. I mean, there's nothing that they don't want access to. That's probably first and foremost what they want, and then obviously administration officials, the President, you name it.
Greta: / Other complaints in the press?
[00:07:00]
Sean: / I think there's been one or two.
Greta: / I'm trying to see how to facilitate a better relationship between the press and the White House.
Sean:
[00:07:30] / Look, I think it's naturally combative, because no matter what the administration is or what the party is, the press is always going to want more of what it is. That's the nature of the relationship, but I think that there's some things that to your question, I think the advent of social media, and I know Ari's talked about this a lot, Dana Perino's talked about this. The most recent Republican press secretaries that were at the advent of this on the Republican side, that there is an element of being first and trying to get things into the ether on social media, et cetera, that has really changed the dynamic by which that room and the relationship exists.
Greta: / One thing, people would much prefer not to have anonymous sources, much prefer, yet when you ...
Sean:
[00:08:00]
[00:08:30] / Well I think there's a difference, just so I'm clear. There are people on a policy level, right? Who are implementing, that are helping to shape policy. Because of the nature of what they do, they don't want their names out there. Not because they're hiding, but because they're there to serve the people in the government, and it's not that they're hiding, but I think when the press, you can bring someone into a briefing room and says, "This briefing's on background" but everyone can see who they are, that sets a much different thing than we'll get a phone call and say, "Hey, we have five background sources that say that you crossed the street the wrong way." The question is, there's no accountability. We don't know who they are. Are they inside the White House? Are they outside the White House? Do they breathe?
[00:09:00] / That is very difficult to respond to, because you're shooting at almost a ghost. I think we try to minimize the use of, and I wouldn't say anonymous sources, but background sources, to make sure that people can see the individuals, that they know they're real, that they're there reading stuff. But I think a lot of folks in government, they're there to serve the American people, to work really hard, to work on a particular issue and they don't necessarily want to have their name and their family particularly exposed to some of the ...
Greta: / But I've heard the complaint coming generically from the White House, from people in the White House complaining about the overuse of anonymous sources by the media, and then I see members of the media rolling their eyes thinking that some of the people who are saying this are the very people who are making statements who wanted to be anonymous.
Sean:
[00:09:30]
[00:10:00] / Well again, I think there's a big difference. We get hit with a lot of this, "There's 18 people that said the following and we don't tell you who any of them are." Again, what I think a lot of times happen is somebody will say, "Well, I know someone who knows someone who lives next to two people, whose brother Jimmy is friends with them on Facebook." That's not really a source. When you're basically defending, that's not somebody in the room. I'll get sometimes, we'll have an event in the Oval Office or in a particular room and there'll be four or five people there, and I'll get a call from a reporter that said, "We have six sources who said," and I'm like, "Well there weren't six people there," so it's very hard to imagine like, "We talked to people who talked to people."
[00:10:30] / It's like, we've all seen the game of telephone. If you just do it among children, you'll get clearly the reason that we teach them sometimes the game is to show how a message will vary by the time it gets two or three people deep, and I think the question is how reliable is that source? When you can get four or five people that say, "We were in the room, that didn't happen," and they go, "Yeah, I know you have four people who were actually there willing to go on the record, but we're not going to accept because we have two people who knew two people that follow them on Twitter." You have to weigh that difference of who the sources are, and I don't think that that's getting as much of a play as it should.
Greta: / Isn't that a two way street, though? Because even the President will tweet things and he will tweet things like for instance, that he's being surveilled or that he was surveilled by President Obama, and we don't get the sources on that, and yet, the rather dramatic assertions.
[00:11:00]
Sean: / Well again, I think there's a question, though, about how this happens. We have asked for an investigation on that front through appropriate channels that were ... I mean, a lot of that material is at a classified level and ...
Greta: / After the bomb was dropped.
Sean: / Huh?
Greta: / I mean, essentially after the tweet. The tweet came first from the President.
Sean:
[00:11:30] / I understand that, but what I'm saying is, there's also how a classified information gets handled is a whole separate discussion, because again, I think that we've seen, and you've seen very bipartisan outrage on this. There is a level to which classified information is being shared with journalists and others who are not cleared, and that presents a danger to our country. I think while journalists sometimes want to toil in this and people want to read the sensational story, there's a reason it's classified. It's because it threatens the safety of the United States and that there are sources and methods that are being protected.
[00:12:00] / I think that we shouldn't be applauding the leaks of classified information. I think the President is right to call this out as a major concern, and I think that you've seen people on both sides of the aisle who've been involved in this world to call that out, that it is concerning when we have classified information and sources that are being used to perpetuate a narrative, and again, when you think about it, it ties your hands when you go to respond. Just because you claim that you know something classified and you call up, we can't then fight back on it because it is classified. So us engaging in that conversation puts us in a very difficult spot.
[00:12:30]
Greta: / Not to belabor a point, but this is a city where virtually a lot of things get classified that probably don't need to get classified.
Sean: / I don't know that ...
Greta: / I mean, for decades, there's been an overclassification in this city which protects ...
Sean: / Well, that's a whole separate ... To the point ...
Greta: / But not in an insignificant one. I mean ...
Sean: / I think on matters of national security, when you are talking about sources and method, and the use of certain things for inappropriate purposes, that is not an overclassification.
Greta: / The President tweeting, I mean, he says he's going to continue to tweet, and I imagine it complicates your job somewhat.
[00:13:00]
Sean: / Well, I think that's the default narrative, but I also think that when you realize that he has an ability through all the channels he has, over 100 million people that he can reach out to. I think some of the media's frustration is that he does have this direct line to the American people where he can communicate accomplishments, thoughts, and push back to false narratives and false stories that frustrates people who want to control that narrative.
[00:13:30]
Greta: / I think another way to look at it, though, is he drops some stink bomb essentially and then in 140 characters or less, and then leaves and there's no follow-up so there's no give and take so you ...
Sean:
[00:14:00] / Well again, I think that for a lot of people, especially outside of Washington, they have yearned for an authentic voice that is not trying to script everything perfectly as a lot of politicians have done. The President, even if you disagree with him on policy, I think one of the things that people give him high marks for is keeping his word and being authentic. I think that that is something that has been missing a lot of times in Washington.
Greta: / But again, not to belabor it, but if you don't have the give and take, if you can't do a follow-up, that's the problem.
Sean:
[00:14:30] / But again, I would argue that if you look at our engagement with the President in terms of myself and him and other members of the staff, we are engaging with the media and outside groups and coalitions and individuals, and unions, and members of Congress on an extremely robust way so that there is follow-up, there is a discussion, it is not in a vacuum that that's occurring.
Greta: / Last night he gave an interview that I read this morning in which he said that the US is not going to go into Syria. Did you see that?
Sean: / I did.
Greta: / Okay. One of the things he has also said is that he's not going to telegraph his plans. He has now just telegraphed to Assad and ISIS that he's not going to go in. How do you reconcile that?
[00:15:00]
Sean:
[00:15:30] / I think that's specific to ground troops. I think there's two issues. One is that doesn't mean how we're going to deal with ISIS as a whole, so if we have to deal with ISIS and it moves into Syria, that's one thing. I think going in and occupying Syria for the express purpose of regime change is something that the President's been very clear on throughout the campaign. I think to try to extrapolate that, I mean, this is something that he talked about well into the campaign that the use of force and the use of military troops and something like that. That shouldn't be a shocker. That's been something that he's been talking about for a while.
Greta: / So Assad should not take his comment that we're not going to go into Syria to mean that he's not going to do another air strike necessarily?
Sean: / Oh, absolutely not.
Greta: / So that's still on ...