All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 2, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
01:02:00
Sean Spicer: The Story behind the Podium
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Folks, all of you know that Legacy Precious Metals is a great sponsor of the Doug Collins Podcast, and I can't tell you right now a more important time to know Legacy Precious Metals.
There right now, your investment portfolio, if you look at the stock market right now, you look at the inflation that's going on, you look at the uncertainty out there, I'm going to tell you, the investments that you're making need to have gold and silver to be a part of it.
You need the precious metals.
Navigators are people who have been there, they know what to look out for, and they know how to come back and navigate you through the streams of your financial situation, whether it's for your retirement Or whether it's just in your long-term investment strategies.
Legacy Precious Metals folks are people who listen.
They listen to you, they listen to your needs, and they help you navigate this uncertain financial times.
When you're seeing the fluctuations back and forth, people will actually need to find a place where they have a portfolio that is balanced.
Having gold and silver in that portfolio is something that you can have as part of yours.
Just go find them at LegacyPMInvestments.com You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Good night, everybody.
Doug Collins here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Just excited to have a great conversation with a good friend, not on the show, but also our country.
We've known it for a long time.
Sean Spicer is with us.
Sean wears multitudes of hats, from author to Newsmax.
Has one of the hottest shows in the country on Newsmax in the evenings.
Just a great guy, but he also comes from a great background.
Navy guy.
For some who know, I had my short time in the Navy before I went to the Air Force, so we have some similarities here as we go.
But coming up, did a lot of politics, a lot of things before becoming actual press secretary for Donald Trump.
So we're going to talk about a lot of things.
Sean, thanks for coming on the show today.
You bet.
Good to be with you.
Let's start off right now.
When you came into...
I want to jump forward, then we'll jump backwards.
Politics, when you really got involved and we're going at it now, we've both been in it a long time.
What do you think the biggest change is that we see in politics today from when we were, you know, proverbially nailing in wood stakes and putting campaign signs on it 20 and 30 years ago?
I mean, I think the speed.
So social media has really changed a lot of that.
When we first got in, when I first started campaigns in the early 90s, you put out a press release maybe in the morning and hoped that you would see it on the evening news in the next day's paper.
There was this lag of when you put something out and now You don't have to wait for the media to be an intermediary.
And so you have instant reactions.
You can have your own Twitter following and YouTube channel and email list.
And so you build your own base.
And so the speed at which things happens is instantaneous.
And so I think that has changed everything because there's no time to digest things.
There's no time to – everyone wants an instant reaction.
And instant outrage, and so the model has shifted significantly, and you can't wait.
Yeah, and one of the things that I've noticed, you know, early on, and I started, we started roughly the same time, you know, the late 80s, early 90s, as far as coming out of school, and we're similar in age, but I mean, coming to that, I remember when I always worked with candidates years past, it was, in that early days, you would start Did the candidate have something to say?
Was there a policy-driven reason?
If it was a local race, I'm running because the trash didn't get picked up on time.
Nationals was a little bit different.
What I've noticed, and even when I'm running and was running and everything else, as you said, the timeline was so narrow that nothing really got play unless it was scandalous.
It was something that somebody took offense to.
Is there play more now that candidates are not really worried?
Did you see, and you're doing your interviews as well, and I do, that they're not as worried about more in-depth discussions of policy?
They're more concerned with what is that quick media?
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
I mean, to your point, you would have – people were running because of experience or an issue, right?
So I've been fighting for this for a long time.
I've been in business and I've seen how this policy has crippled economic development or I've been fighting for lower taxes or there was a reason, a cause.
And it's funny.
I've been watching people now – Pop up in districts all over the country and just be like, okay, well, I'm going to run.
I've got a big social media following.
And not that that's not – that hasn't happened before.
Don't get me wrong.
But it's now become like a thing where it's like as long as I've been on TV a few times or I have a large Twitter following, I can now run for office.
And again, I'm not shunning that.
But it's now become a much bigger thing, right?
That used to be – That was the exception, not the rule.
Before it was, you know, I've been involved in the community a long time.
My family's been here for a while.
I have been on the school board for a while.
Now, you know, and if you had just moved into a place, you were the carpetbagger.
And now that's less of a concern to people and there's a celebrity factor.
When I say celebrity, it's not necessarily like that you're a Kardashian.
It's more that you've got a social media following.
Less that you are, hey, I'm steeped in foreign policy.
I'm running because I want to balance the budget.
And I think that that's interesting to me because when I got in, in the early 90s, Republicans were really focused on fiscal issues in particular and I'm getting in because I want to balance the budget.
I want to make lower taxes.
I want to do all this.
It's interesting now when I talk to members in the House in particular, the ones that were elected in the last two elections, and I'll ask them, hey, look, you guys are almost certain to take back the House.
What are you going to be for?
With the exception of the oversight stuff, which I'm a huge – listen, I'm glad they're doing that.
Let's hold this administration accountable and let's get to the bottom of some of this stuff.
I'm hugely supportive of them.
But I also am very concerned about what we're for.
And they'll look at me and say, I don't know.
Yep.
And that concerns me.
I mean, I'm very concerned about China.
I'm very concerned about our spending.
And I don't get the sense that there's a lot of depth in a lot of folks that feel like, is that an issue that I'm going to take up?
Well, I think it's two-fold.
And number one, look, if you have candidates, and I'll hit the big, you know, sort of, you know, elephant in the room here.
You know, Donald Trump came to the White House, yes, was a celebrity, but yet had decades of business, decades of international experience.
You know, it was not like this guy just started a business, you know, five days ago and all of a sudden wanted to run for office.
What I'm seeing is what you're seeing, and I get a lot of calls, and I know you do some political consulting and all as well.
I'm getting calls from people who Have barely started their life, barely started their business and say, I'm going to run for Senate.
I want to run for the Congress.
Almost saying that there's no, and I had one in particular tell me, I said, well, why don't you run for the state house or run for, oh, I don't want to do that.
That's boring.
I mean, I'm sitting here saying, then why are you running?
Sean, are you seeing that a little bit?
Is it more, is it the auditioning stage here?
Yeah, I'm seeing that, but it's also like – and I don't mind – like if you can articulate – like in other words, if you can say to me, look, here's why I want to run because it's not that I'm – it's because the federal issues, federal tax policy is what I really care about because if we don't address that, then blah, blah, blah.
I mean it's not even that I – I think the problem is that people don't know why, right?
That's the thing.
If you can't articulate it, I think like I like the way that some people are running for school board now because they're like, wow, I get it.
I think if we don't address some of these, you know, as the White House would put it, the root causes of what's going on, that to me, those are some of the most important things.
If we don't stop what's happening at the root causes, at where these kids are being indoctrinated, which is what's happening.
Then we've got a problem.
But I think what's happening is a candidate says, like, it's cool to be in Congress, which is fine.
I don't have – like, again, I think that's great.
But what I want to know is, tell me, what is the reason?
Is it because you see China as a massive threat, and therefore you need to enact policies and fight for policies that will – I don't necessarily think there's a lot of folks that have thought that through.
Well, my concern is that it seems like a lot of times, even members, and I talk to members all the time, most of them, a lot of them were my colleagues, I knew that.
What concerns me is, like you said, the oversight stuff, yeah, that's what I call the bubble gum.
That's the stuff that everybody's going to pay attention to, everybody wants to know, and invalid stuff, if they act upon it.
That's the other key on it.
And you know as well as I do, in a split world, that's going to be very difficult.
What got me, though, was when I... And I've had leadership on.
I've had McCarthy.
I've had Scalise.
I've talked to a lot of them.
And you get this, well, we're planning it.
We're sort of setting an agenda.
And it's like, okay, we're nine months out here.
There needs to be a little bit more meat to the bones.
Well, and I get it.
Look, I will say this, and I understand this.
I've spent six years at the RNC. I've worked at the NRCC. I've worked at the NRSC. I mean, so...
Yeah, you got out of your purse.
I get it.
I get it, right?
Which is the...
It goes something like this.
You got Biden and the Democrats.
They're at, let's call it 30...
Let's give them the full 39. And they're sort of...
They're shooting themselves.
So why put something out there that gives them a target to shoot at that's a distraction, right?
And...
And so it's kind of frankly, to be honest with you, is what happened in the California recall is instead of it becoming Gavin Newsom, Larry Elder allowed it to become about him as opposed to Newsom.
So instead of it being a recall and a referendum on Gavin Newsom, they said, oh, look at this Larry Elder guy.
And I think that was a mistake.
That's why Gray Davis lost the recall.
The first time years ago.
Anyway, I get off on a tangent here.
I don't agree with that philosophy.
I think that what you do in what I think Gingrich and co.
did back in the day, which was brilliant, is you create issues that are so bulletproof that even a centrist Democrat would say, yeah, I'm pretty much on board on that.
I think that creating issues that Literally every member of the House conference and probably a quarter of the Democratic caucus could get on board and saying, we'll do these 10 things so that every American could say, actually, that sounds pretty reasonable, but it's a contrast with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Doesn't mean that's the only thing you're going to do, but those are the first 10 things that you'll do out of the gate.
And it draws a stark contrast.
But you can't tell me that putting a plan together to balance the budget is a bad thing.
You can't tell me that protecting life is a bad thing.
You can't tell me that protecting women's sports is a bad thing.
So you start putting those things together.
Those are fights that I want to have.
Yeah, I agree.
And one of the things here that you've got to look at here, and I'm going to draw a parallel here.
You've written books.
We'll talk about your books.
I've written one as well about that.
It really was focused on 2019. That became the year of the impeachment and everything going on.
But it had followed over from the previous years of...
of the Clinton scandals and everything else.
What I saw when the Democrats took back over in 2019 was this one tunneled obsession.
Now they quote had these quote ideas out there but they were not focused.
Their one focus was get Donald Trump and that's what they went after and then ended up doing nothing.
They've wasted, you know, and I'm glad, But a little over two years now, on to their third year now, have been absolutely nothing because they can't have these pictures that you're talking about here, these things that generally mollify or at least bring together people even of a little bit different backgrounds.
Well, that's right.
I mean, at the end of the day, you know, if you kind of divvy up the sort of the electorate in three buckets, you've got your hardcore base of both sides.
And then, you know, in a very simplified way, you've got a group in the middle that is saying, okay, like, yeah, but get some things done.
And so I think that's the problem is that you mollify your team by the oversight stuff.
But then at the end of the day, you've got people who are like, yeah, yeah, that's great.
But my kids still need to learn.
My health care costs are rising.
My business still needs to survive.
These regulations are killing me.
So you can only do so much when it comes to that, and I think that's where you need to do some stuff to do that, to satisfy your base.
And frankly, not just in purely political terms, but also, I mean, frankly, it's the right thing to do.
I mean, I think there's so much gross negligence going on right now, especially on the immigration front.
But at the end of the day, there's things that really substantively need to be done to improve the quality of life for so many Americans, like inflation.
Well, I think that's what everybody's looking for.
Now, Sean, most people know you, again, from your very public role, and I have a lot of folks who come on this show that they all got to know us through an interview.
They got to know us through a TV or a camera.
What I'd also like to say is, how did you get to where you're at now?
And you mentioned your other, you know, I call them battle ribbons.
I've had those as well.
Talk to us just a little bit to get to know Sean Spacher.
Somebody didn't know you except for watching you on TV on Newsmax every night.
Talk a little bit about your background, and then you went, you know, coming up, and then you're getting into politics, but you also are Navy as well, and let's talk about that for a little bit.
Yeah.
You know, not to...
Throw a shameless plug in there, but I wrote a book called The Briefing that if anyone really cares about, they can go buy.
And it just, it really goes through the whole life.
But basically, I grew up in Rhode Island.
My father sold boats for a living.
Non-political family.
I went off to college in an effort to think what I was going to make money.
I started off as a Japanese language major, thinking that was like my Ticket to making money, which it would have been except for I was horrible at it and had zero interest and then kind of got bit by the political bug and really, as I like to say, had sort of like an intellectual awakening.
I was captivated by this idea of… Going out and selling people on a candidate, right?
And obviously, to some degree, an issue at times.
But in the first Tuesday after the first Monday of every election year, you either won or lost.
And you came up with tactics and ideas and strategies to win.
And you know whether or not you won or lost right away.
And I love that idea.
And so I got involved in the early 90s in my first race.
And, you know, as I like to say, I became sort of a minor league ballplayer.
I went from race to race.
I lived in someone's trailer.
I lived in, you know, over a garage.
I mean, you name it, I did it.
But I kind of kept going around to find the next best race.
Moved in and out of Capitol Hill, worked for...
You know, a whole bunch of different members of Congress and then would pack my bags in even years and head off on the campaign trail.
Florida, Western Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, you know, and then started in, I worked, as I mentioned, at the NRCC, the National Republican Congressional Committee.
And then I worked for the House Budget Committee doing their communications under Congressman Jim Nussle of Iowa.
And then I became the Communications Director for the House Republican Conference.
And then I ended up taking this job as the Assistant US Trade Rep In the last three years of the Bush administration, I knew nothing about trade, but they needed somebody to come in and sort of sell the Bush trade agenda.
And I've always believed that if you're good at communications and creating strategies, you can pretty much adapt it to anything.
And I loved it.
I got to travel the world and visit...
Over 30 countries, and the only two countries I'd been to previously, or three, I'd been to Tijuana, so technically I'd been to Mexico.
I'd been to Canada as a kid.
I'd been to Iraq.
And I think I'd been to Iraq.
So, and then as a side note, when I grew up, my grandfather, great-grandfather was a Medal of Honor recipient.
As I mentioned, I grew up in Rhode Island.
It's a big Navy state.
I'd always tried to join either the Coast Guard or the Navy.
It just had never fit in my career because we had to make our own money growing up.
Like if we wanted to put...
If I wanted a car or gas or whatever, I'd pay for it.
That was sort of my dad's thing.
If you want something, you get it.
You pay for it.
It just never worked.
I was a competitive sailor.
That was kind of how I was trying to get into college.
So anyway, at 29, I had discovered this program called Direct Commissioned Officer Program.
I received a commission on public affairs in the Navy.
And long story short, I just finished my 23rd year in the Navy.
And I think I'm pretty close to the end.
I can realize that my 21st trip around comes March 1st.
My wife and I have been having that discussion here.
Especially when it came up to having to go into the most...
I've got a Byzantine system in the world to schedule active tour dates and get paid, and I'm having to do that in the next few days.
So it's been like, really, this is not it.
But it's provided a great asset.
You mentioned also coming back, and I want to be taking this further into political, because there might be somebody out there listening to this podcast who were back when you and I were 18, 20 years old.
We were just getting started and sort of seeing how this happened.
You mentioned...
The interesting relationship with NRSC, NRCC, RNC, all these acronyms for those of us in the military is about normal.
Talk about those, because a lot of people have a really different connotation of what those committees do, how they work, and even if you're a member of Congress like I was, it's like, oh no, NRCC's calling for my dues kind of thing.
Talk about that for a minute as far as how you saw the roles of those groups playing.
Yeah, first, let me just put in a shameless plug for this.
When I was young, to your point, you know, the first few jobs I got weren't really jobs, they were internships.
And I got to tell you, you know, showing up, and even at the RNC, almost everybody I hired for an entry-level job interned for me.
And so, you know, I just, for folks that want to get into politics, like, showing up And putting in the time, I just and I know in your office you probably, you know, were getting flooded with interns, but it's like When you show up as an intern, you get to watch somebody.
You get to watch their work ethic, their skill level, and it's like an audition for a couple weeks or a month or two months or whatever.
So I'll just tell you, it's not – you don't go into politics to get rich.
I think my first job, I literally made – my first job – my first paid campaign job, I made $1,000 a month.
$1,000 a month.
That was before taxes.
So, I mean, I literally was, you know, eating ramen noodles and staying at campaign events and shoving stuff in my pockets.
But I think for people who are interested, it's understanding that you're not going to get, you know, that I think people would all the time think somehow there's 80 jobs on a campaign.
There's not.
There's five, six paid jobs.
And, you know, it's the person that has done four or five internships, they'll probably get it.
But To your question, the NRCC is the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Those are the folks that look over, your former colleagues and yourself, the members of Congress and the people who want to be members of Congress.
The NRSC is the Senatorial Committee that does the same, and then the RNC is the governing body, if you will.
I used to call it the league, sort of like the NFL or the MLB. They – despite what I think a lot of people sometimes have preconceived notions, to start with the RNC, it's got like 200 people that work in a building in Washington.
It is agnostic.
It does not care – a million people think that the RNC does a million things.
It does a handful of things.
It's like I said.
It's like the NFL. It oversees the rules.
It helps facilitate things.
It does not care.
The only thing it cares about, frankly, is administering the presidential rules for the convention and then making sure that the party survives, et cetera, et cetera.
But there is no tipping the scales.
It doesn't have the power to do it, and it raises money to eventually help Funnel down to different state parties and such.
But his job is not to pick winners and losers.
It helps people with an R next to their name.
So if you are, you know, an elected official, you know, it helps you.
But to the point that I just made before, there are different structures, right?
So there's the Governor's Association, there's the Senatorial Committee, the NRSC, etc.
And those are the ones that help that group of people.
So the NRCC helps the members of Congress, the House members.
And it's, like I said, it's pretty formulaic.
I worked there for two years.
I oversaw a division that helped current members of Congress get reelected.
That was it.
I saw it.
That was my division.
And it's, like I said, it's pretty formulaic in the sense that all we did was look at a number.
Are you going to, you know, does the polling show that you are going to get reelected or not?
And if your polling shows that you're going to get re-elected by 10 points or more, then you're fine.
And you may want to win by ton, but we don't have money to get people re-elected by 20 points or more.
If you're going to get re-elected by just a handful, then they're going to throw some money your way.
But the idea is to increase the field as big as possible, to save as many members of Congress Who are up for reelection and then to get as many new ones reelected and that's it.
Plain and simple.
So they look at how much money you're raising, how many volunteers you have.
So like I said, there's a lot of times where people from the outside said, well, this person didn't get help.
It's a very simple thing.
Are you hitting the metrics you need to?
But it's not a welfare program.
Well, I think one of the things there, and you work with clients and you get calls all the time to help, and I do as well, and one of the hardest things to sit there and tell a candidate, so to speak, is because, and how many times have you heard this, Sean?
You'll probably laugh at it.
Oh, I've got a big grassroots network.
Everybody's going to come together.
Okay, for those listening to the podcast, there's red flag number one to a professor.
It's a groundswell of support.
Everybody, that's the literally, that's the one thing.
I'm different.
I have, you wouldn't believe the number of people that are out there.
My church is going to, it's like, you know, it is literally the number one thing that everyone tells you that's not doing what they're supposed to be doing is I'm different because I've got this swell of grassroots that's, you know, going to overwhelm everybody.
Yeah, and you know, look, I don't have that money.
And right now, the unfortunate part is, as you well know, there's a number of consultants out there who are in that first phase of like when you and I were going that are willing to gain experience and willing to take advantage of that even on a little bit of a...
And I think that's becoming the more, okay, well, if they got a little bit, if they can raise enough money to pay a couple people, I'll be one of those.
And if we lose, we lose.
We don't, we don't.
But that's the first rule of if you don't have money, You don't have a focus and you don't have the ability to raise more money.
I can't think of five people in my sphere that would have a quote enough even groundswell of support to even start a race.
Yeah, and the one thing I'll say is that, like, you know, when you look around, whether it's Dave Bratt, who took on Eric Cantor a few years back, I mean, there are instances where you don't have to have, it doesn't have to be a one-for-one match, but you can't, it can't be, hey, I only have 50 grand in the bank, right?
There's a difference between I'm only raising $800,000.
But if your family and friends aren't able to scrape up a few hundred thousand dollars early on, that's a tell.
Look, I'll be the first person to admit it.
I think it's horrible.
I think that there are good people with good ideas that would make great members of Congress.
But if you can't You can't be a good member of Congress if you're a bad candidate.
It just doesn't work that way.
Yeah, well, or if they happen to get there, I remember a candidate who won a surprise race.
I'm just going to leave it open like that, because all of this person really wouldn't care.
They won a surprise race, and they had done it with lower funds.
They were outspent, you know, and everything.
And they get to Congress, and they think that that's the way they survive.
And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
And then all of a sudden, they start having fundraising requests.
They start having, you know...
All this started coming back to them, and they said, wait, this is a whole different world than what I've got.
But you brought up something as well, fundraising.
And let's just explore this for a second, because I think it's so important.
The latest thing talks about Democrats who used to talk about dark money not being something that they wanted to deal with.
Now they outspent us in 2020 by a big margin.
The other tale for me is when I have a candidate, and I ask them if they have a fundraiser, and I tell them that they need to make so many calls, they need to raise that.
And they said, I'd rather be out seeing people.
That understanding is, is people don't understand the candidates.
You only see so many people.
In a congressional district of 780,000 people, you could only probably physically touch, if you're really, really good, 10,000, 15,000 people.
I mean, in a geographic sense, you've got to be able to get your message out early.
And as you said, is that fair?
Not really, but it's the reality of what we're seeing in campaigns now.
Yeah.
I mean, look, my firm, Point One, we do voter contact mail, right?
And so we can tell you, here's how many people are going to vote in a primary, but you think about just postage and mailing them.
It's going to cost you, let's call it 80 cents.
You've got to be able to contact them, but you can't possibly, even in a primary, in a decent primary, you're looking at a universe of 30,000.
And so you're right.
I mean it just – the math doesn't work and so people think somehow that they're going to stand in front of a grocery store and it just – it doesn't – the numbers don't add up and so I think – There's this false sense that someone's going to sort of defy the odds.
Again, it doesn't – the numbers aren't there when you think about how many people go to any particular place and then of that, how many people are in your party, how many people within the party vote in a primary, how many people that vote in that primary would vote for you.
So when you raise – and it's not an either or, but you have to have enough money that then you can follow up with those people and get your message out effectively because your opponent is doing the same thing, is going out and raising money and then contacting them.
So this is a battle.
Well, I think it's another important thing to realize is you may be famous in your neighborhood, your world, so to speak.
But the reality is I had a candidate that I know very well statewide, had been a statewide elected official for a number of years, was moving to a much more higher profile race.
Did a poll, and again, polling is a whole different issue, but did a poll, and their name ID was in the low teens.
This is a statewide elected official, and we just assume everybody knows who we are.
And I think that becomes the bigger issue, especially in these races.
People don't know who you are.
Your neighbors and friends may know who you are, but nobody else does.
I could put my little Shih Tzu puppy named Cree on the ballot, and somebody will say, are you familiar with this?
Yeah, I'm familiar with them, because they don't want to feel like they don't know.
Many people just say they just don't know.
Well, also remember, during an election, when you're getting whacked with an ad every 10 seconds, it says, Doug Collins, Doug Collins, Doug Collins, Doug Collins.
But then four months later, you're like, what was that guy?
I mean, it's just natural that you don't necessarily remember...
It's not you.
It's like you think about it.
You'll see an ad and then five weeks later, remember the pizza place that I was thinking of that we saw that ad for?
So it's not personal.
It's just life.
We get bombarded with so many things these days between TV and digital that you can't remember.
But that's also why we try to think about how do we stay in front of people throughout.
Members of Congress use the congressional franks to get their word out and you want to keep your email list fresh and all that kind of stuff because you need to keep that going.
Well, and that's where I think the social media aspect that we briefly touched on has transformed that even more.
From 30 years ago, your member of Congress, you may have heard from them through a newsletter at best that you got in snail mail once or maybe twice a year.
You may have seen them in your local paper.
Nowadays, you've got members of Congress that own Twitter accounts, social media accounts, that stay in, and even to the lower level.
Try to stay in, you know, in contact with some of those people on a daily basis.
Yeah.
Well, and you're right.
I mean, you could email, you know, someone's got an email list and they're blasting out there on their Facebook page.
But yeah, I mean, you can have a much more personal and regular relationship with people than you did, you know, 10 years ago.
Yeah.
And again, in the personal meta, this universe sense of I know this person, I recognize this person, which goes to the clickability issues in politics.
Once you get there, though, Sean, and I think this is the thing, once you worked in the committees and you worked your way up, when people really, really got to know you was, of course, when you took on the role in the Trump administration.
The press secretary, and I've read a couple of books, and in fact, I was going to look it up, and I had the name on it.
It was talking about the rise of the press secretary, which the modern press secretary, however you want to put it, is really a sort of Post-Truman, Roosevelt kind of era.
It's not been all that long.
First, for the folks, when they got to know you, what was it like when you first knew you were going to stand behind that podium?
So it was interesting because I was in New York City on December 22nd when Trump had announced that my family had come up.
We were actually on our way to Rhode Island.
It was a We normally would go home to my parents' place and spend Christmas up there.
So I'd been in New York working on the campaign.
So they stopped in New York to kind of pick me up.
And it was about one o'clock.
And I remember looking and all of the TV screens had it on.
And, you know, we went out to dinner and it was just that day changed everything.
You know, I joke with people that there was the day, you know, I had done about 500 interviews during the course of my six years at the RNC and I had gotten recognized in like this sweater section of a Joseph A. Banks in Alexandria before.
And even then it wasn't even like a real recognition.
The guy was like, I think you're the Republican guy.
I've seen you before.
Yeah.
So it was definitely weird to suddenly go from that to like, because as you know, Trump is a very polarizing guy.
And so everybody had an opinion.
They were, you know, either loved you or hated you right off the bat.
And then it got much more intense.
So it was just, it was, I don't know.
I mean, it sort of was very, very odd to go from sort of Walking down the street and no one cared to suddenly everybody's staring and pointing.
And it was also just very weird for my family as well because, you know, suddenly they, you know, it became a concern about, you know, what people, you know, them as well going, okay, like, where, you know, do you want to be, do I need to worry about your safety now?
Exactly.
Well, looking at it, I mean, because your communications, I mean, you've been looking at this, you've watched the communicators from that podium, you know, from the press secretary's perspective for a long time.
You had to have an expectation when you got there, and frankly, I believe the press were so...
In such trauma and shock, and I've described this, and a little bit to let you talk about your books and stuff, but I've talked about this before.
I just believe that that whole left establishment could not believe Donald Trump won.
I don't believe you got a fair shake in any stretch from the media to the media.
I know you didn't care, but it shaped who we are.
And I've been in that position.
You've been in that position.
I mean, people send you because of just who you're associated with.
When you first stepped up there and you went, Did you...
Has the same issues of instantaneous news, instantaneous cycles, needing to be the buzz, all this...
Has that affected the White House press corps as much as it appears to?
Oh, God, yeah.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
I just...
I cannot...
I've been – like I said, I did my first campaign in 92. I've always known that the press was biased.
I mean like in every campaign, it was – like if it was environmental, it was front page news.
If the Chamber of Commerce endorsed you, it was like we don't care.
So I mean I've seen the bias up front.
I've watched it.
But I've never seen anything like I did with Trump.
It was just literally jaw-dropping, like to watch it and go, you guys know that you can see yourselves, right?
And these were a lot of these folks I'd known a long time.
So I'm like, wow, you're not even hiding it.
You're not faking it anymore.
So, yeah, I couldn't...
I don't know.
It was, to me...
Watching some of these folks do what they did and act in the way that they did and then no one calling them out.
The literally performance art that existed in the White House briefing room to get a clip or a click so that they could get on evening news or go viral on YouTube or get a cable contract.
I mean look, the simplest thing – and I wrote about this in my first book.
There's a guy named Brian Karam and he's a fine guy.
I mean I have nothing personal against him, but he's the playboy correspondent in the White House briefing room, so giving merit to this idea that there are articles.
After I left, he got into this back and forth with Sarah Sanders yelling at her in the briefing room about something or other, whatever.
And within like 24 hours, CNN gives him a cable contract.
Not because he broke a story, not because his journalism is amazing, but because he got into a tussle with her and it went viral on YouTube.
So the incentive isn't to do good journalism.
It isn't to break a story.
It isn't to have awesome sources.
It's to yell at somebody and to get into it and to create a scenario where you have a clip that goes viral.
That's the incentive now.
I've now watched the contrast.
Between what they've done now and what goes on in this Biden White House.
And it's, I mean, oh my God.
It's literally embarrassing watching them sit there and talk about what kind of ice cream he's going to have.
You know, how cute the cat is.
It's bad.
I hadn't thought about this, and I've been thinking about this interview for a while and talking about it, but you just brought up something that we're probably going to definitely stir up the media as they get a hold of this.
We've seen, especially with Trump's election and the way the press handled that, I think we saw the rise of what I'll call the The media personality, and I say that not in a sense of like you and I talk about media personality, but it's almost the actor part of the media personality.
As you said, they're looking for that clique.
They're usually looking for that viral.
Acosta's one.
You get these that are out there.
In the old days, you had Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas who were raising their hands, yelling at the president, yelling at you to answer a real question.
These questions are, you know, again, it's been amazing to see the difference between the Trump administration and the Biden administration.
And then you've got the rise of the newsletters.
Do you sense this, that journalists are becoming more active in promoting themselves in these environments?
You see that?
Yeah.
It's a great point that you made because they pat each other on the back and they've created this insular group where they always – if you read them, they're always like, our friend so-and-so at the Washington Post or so-and-so at Politico.
They create a scenario where they – and it goes back to something I mentioned a moment ago.
They never call each other out, right?
So Nina Totenberg the other day from the National Public Radio – She creates this scenario.
She writes this story about how it was Sotomayor, right, who says that she won't attend briefings because Neil Gorsuch won't wear a mask.
Well, then Justice Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts says, that's not true.
I never asked I don't know how much more you can.
In fact, one of the stories came out and said that they really didn't address the crux of what she was writing about.
I'm like, I don't understand this.
They literally debunked it.
And there's no repercussions for false reporting.
And I think instead, they circle the wagons.
And then she goes on the Today Show to do analysis about the retirement of Justice Breyer.
And Savannah says, it's great to have someone like you here today because there's no one better to break this down.
And I'm thinking no one better.
No one better.
You just literally got called out for writing a false story.
About what went on in the court and now you're going to do analysis?
They protect each other.
It used to be they talk about the blue line and how cops protected each other.
Anything that cops used to do to protect each other isn't nearly...
Close to what journalists do to protect each other.
No, this movie star, and I won't say movie star, it's probably the wrong one, but this personality-driven news site, which you're right.
I mean, all you gotta do is read any of these sites.
They build each other up.
But it's like CNN saying Jeffrey Toobin is the best to actually talk about legal analysis.
You know, really?
Give me a break.
You know, as we go back.
But we're seeing this.
But it also takes something that you had to deal with.
And this is where I'm becoming concerned.
You know, the media talks all the time.
And I believe in a free press.
I believe it's, you know, where we need to be in this country.
That's why I'm with Newsman.
I watch you.
I watch others.
But the problem we're having here is the press itself now is taking stories.
And in the Trump administration, one thing that used to aggravate me the most was especially immigration.
It was almost as if the Obama administration didn't exist on the border when it came to trying to gotcha the Trump administration.
You know, the quote, kids in cages.
That was all under Obama, but yet it was like it didn't exist.
If this is the progression of media, Sean, and let's look at this from a bigger perspective.
Why should people trust any of it?
I mean, where are we going here, and how much of a loss is that to our country?
I couldn't agree with you more.
I mean, to me, the story of what's happening at the border and how it's not being covered is unbelievable.
I mean, and I talk about this all the time on the show because I'm like, it's easy to stop this, okay?
And so what I posit is this.
If you're not stopping it, then why?
Because here's the thing.
We've got these now planes coming in with single men that are being sent around the country.
And no one can answer the question, where are they going?
Why are they doing them?
What's happening to them?
And in fact, not only that, we had Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on the other night.
They've sued to try to get answers and no one's telling them.
And the question is like, what's going on?
And if you can't get an answer as to why, You have to assume that there's some political motive going on here.
I'm sorry that people will say, well, that's cynical, but I'm sorry.
Then tell me that it's not political.
Tell me that this isn't about bringing these people in, then claiming that they get a right to vote.
And that this is part of a bigger plan.
I'm sorry.
I think it is.
I also think that what's happening with voting rights is a big issue because they've created this false narrative that places like your state of Georgia are preventing people from voting, which is not true at all.
I brought this up over and over and over again.
The Democrats in state after state give people who are in this country illegally the right to get a license.
I held this up to the former Secretary of State in Nevada the other day.
And I said, here is the form to register to vote in Nevada.
What you need is a license.
Your state gives anyone in the state illegally the right to get a license.
So what prevents them from voting, from registering to vote?
Nothing.
How many people are you assigning in the state of Nevada to look into people who are registering to vote illegally?
One and a half.
One and a half people.
Okay, so when the press tells you that no one's voting illegally, how do they know?
They don't.
It is amazing to me, and I've asked this over and over again.
So I had the Secretary of State of Florida, and I said, what happens if someone from Nevada moves to Florida?
Because now they have a driver's license, and they move there, and they get a license in Florida, because now they can just transfer their license.
She said, we can't.
It's just, but this, no one says, like, why are we not using any common sense?
Why are we saying that it's okay to use a Dropbox and just drop your ballot off with no over – I mean, like, just I don't understand.
Every American can use an absentee ballot.
You call.
I can't vote in person.
Can you send me a ballot?
Sure.
Here you go.
What's tough about that?
How is that tough?
Yeah.
Well, Sean, let me jump in right here.
That's true in the state of Georgia.
It's not true in Delaware.
You have to have a reason to vote.
Here's the mistake, Doug.
Here's the mistake.
Republicans keep saying Delaware makes it tough.
It's not tough.
No, it's not.
We've got to stop trying to make it – the Democrats have set a trap.
And so Republicans keep running around and going, it's easier to vote in Georgia than it is in Delaware.
And so now we want Delaware to match Georgia, right?
I don't want – I want Delaware to stay Delaware.
Exactly.
But the thing that's funny is when you look at the information in Georgia, all of this talk – Delaware – when Georgia first did its voter ID a decade plus ago, minority participation went up.
In Fulton County after the last election, minority participation went up.
So all of this lie – That the media talks about in terms of minority participation.
It's actually gone up twice after the reforms that were enacted.
So the data that they're using is a lie.
I mean, not the data, the narrative they're spreading.
It flies in the face of the data.
And yet, they're spreading a falsehood.
And that's what I look at.
I was in the state legislature when some of this actually took place.
And I've made that point many times.
African-American male, African-American female, Hispanic male, Hispanic female have all went up.
What I think the narrative that I'm trying to point out with the press part of this is, is you read Politico, you read CNN. Every time they talk about the Voting Rights Act, they say, to combat voter suppression laws in states like Georgia.
And the question is, and what I would love to have is give me one of those reporters, you know, give me one of the political reporters, a roll call reporter, or give me CNN, and just sit them down in a show like this and say, tell me how it suppresses vote.
That's what I'm getting at, or where.
That's the point.
They say this, but they will never, that's, I agree with you 100%.
Every time they say this, somebody's got to ask them, where?
Where?
Tell me, where is it being suppressed?
How?
They say it as if it's a fact.
It is.
Well, and every time President Biden, or Vice President Harris, or anybody that says the things that he says, even if he whispers in the mics or whatever, No joke.
It's just like, huh?
But they never follow up with, Mr. President, I respect your opinion here in this.
Can you show me or can you express where Georgia's voting laws keeps people from voting?
Or where any state, for that matter?
You know, where is it actually?
Because if it was an actual, you know, issue there of race or anything else, I mean, that's an automatic lawsuit.
It's an automatic, you're going to get turned over.
It's just not reported.
You wouldn't have got away with that.
From the press corps in what you had to deal with.
No, because it's not true.
It just sat there all alone.
Well, this is the part that is beginning to be frustrating.
Last big press corps, he's only done two.
He did the last one.
Your part of getting, I mean, the behind the scenes that goes on for this.
Could you ever imagine giving Donald Trump a card and says, here, sir, call on these people and here's their names and here's their pictures?
Yeah, I did.
Anything.
Yeah.
How'd that work out there, Sean?
Didn't work out too well.
But, I mean, it's really bad, though, when he does this.
And, you know, if you're sitting here today looking at watching the video here.
Now, Sean Spicer Newsmax.
I wanted to put out a tweet the other day during that time.
But I don't think people would have got it because, unfortunately, we're such, you know, we don't do history anymore.
I wanted to say, the press corps needs Helen Thomas.
Where is Helen and Sam when you need them?
How did they get them to sit there so quietly?
Until toward the end?
I mean, it got a little more at the end.
But that first hour was like scripted TV. Because here's why.
Here's why.
The folks in the legacy media, the ABCs, the NBCs, the Washington Post, New York Times, they know they'll get taken care of, okay?
They don't care about anybody else.
So as long as they know they're going to get their take, they're good.
So that's the deal.
They know they're going to be fine.
So who cares?
To them, we're going to get our due, so...
Sit back, relax, let this thing go.
He'll call on us.
Rest assured, we're good.
Interesting question for you here.
You brought it up.
Because I think that you said they get theirs.
Do you think the legacy media reporters of the 60s, 70s, 80s in particular, I'll even go to the 90s, do you think they're proud of what they're seeing from their colleagues now?
No.
I know from talking to some of them, they decry the activism that they see.
I mean, I have a new book, as you know, Radical Nation.
I have two chapters on this about how the activism, a lot of the folks that I'll talk to Yeah.
Thanks for that.
I want to get it.
Talk about your books real quickly because I know a lot of people want that and then I've got a sort of sum up question that comes from just the old, you know, still believes that Washington is a place that actually can work and there's still traditions that matter.
But talk about your books right now.
Well, the first book was called The Briefing, as I mentioned.
That was sort of when I first left the White House.
It kind of is sort of my life, my journey, my experience at the White House.
I wrote a book after that called Leading America that was sort of the Trump agenda heading into the last election.
And then the latest one, Radical Nation, really exposes the Biden-Harris agenda And I'll tell you, I mean, as I was getting ready to go on, I was about to send this tweet out, but there's a story out today about Javier Becerra.
And it's funny, the Washington Post, of all things in this story, writes about Becerra not having, you know, it says Becerra, the former Attorney General of California, and a congressman with little healthcare experience.
I'm like, oh my god.
It's like they lifted it from Radical Nation because I go through all of the top folks in the Biden cabinet and in the White House and talk about how, frankly, they were all checking boxes.
He picks Pete Buttigieg to run the Department of Transportation because he's the first LBGGQ person to lead a department.
Kamala Harris, first woman of color.
When he talks about him, not me, when he does, it's not about their qualification or experience.
It's about The box, they check.
Same thing now with the Supreme Court.
So Radical Nation basically gives you the background and the understanding of what's really happening and why.
And I think as I like to tell people, it's the why.
You kind of a light goes off and you go, now I get these policies and why they're pursuing them.
And he talks about why, you know, Biden talks about during the campaign trail becoming the most progressive president ever.
And if you want to understand his goals...
I think it frames this administration in a way that you understand what they're trying to achieve.
So if you want to really get that, because we've got three more years of Biden, if you want to understand what's happening, there's a great chapter on Kamala Harris and her background.
As I said, two chapters on the press.
And then the last chapter in Radical Nation is a whole thing about what conservatives can do to sort of have its conservative action plan.
I think that's important.
And you can get those anywhere, folks.
Listen to the podcast.
Go to anywhere you get your books and you can find Sean's books.
Sean, I want to wrap up this with something.
Again, some of the most amazing times that I had in Congress were standing on the floor of the House as a member in the State of the Union, doing voting.
There's still, and I still believe, and I may be Pollyanna-ish to that, but that's fine.
I'd rather be.
That Washington is still a place, when done properly, is the most valuable place in the world for freedom and hope and growth as we go forward.
It can actually work.
But there are little traditions that you have, you know, whose office is that?
One that is always talked about from the press perspective, and you were the first, so you took the transition from the Obama administration.
The flat jacket discussion.
Is that real?
Is it not real?
I mean, you may have talked about it or wrote about it before, but how was the transition coming out of Obama?
Because you've heard a lot.
I mean, they've denied everything, but I've heard a lot from friends that it was not a genteel transition.
So actually, I did write about that in the briefing.
I had a really good transition.
It was actually with Jen Psaki, who was the communications director of the White House, and Josh Earnest.
They were really good and gracious to me and to my team.
Josh was the press secretary.
Jen was the communications director.
They couldn't have been kinder to me.
In fact, it was funny.
There's one story in the end.
Josh is in there and him and his team are kind of walking me around, showing me things.
And I walked out of the press secretary's office in the hallway and I literally smack into Biden.
And Biden grabs me and goes, you got to come into my office.
I got to talk to you.
And he walks me down to the vice president's office.
We sit down and he gives me 20 minutes of just Joe Biden-isms.
Really, it was gracious.
I mean he sat down and was talking to me and it was – It was kind of funny.
I mean I literally am sitting there thinking to myself – obviously at that time you're not thinking, oh my gosh, you're going to be the future president.
But they were very – they were good to me.
I don't want to speak for anyone else because obviously I can't.
But it was – They were good.
And it's one of those things.
I was the 28th press secretary.
So there's not a ton of us and it's a small club.
And so we sort of take care of our own in a nonpartisan way.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to bring out, and I'm glad you did, Sean.
Thank you for doing that.
But at the end of the day, and one of the things that I miss, the thing is some people say, well, Doug, you miss Washington.
Well, I enjoy doing what I'm doing.
I miss the people on both sides of the aisle away from the cameras.
And we shared an experience.
Less than 10,000 people, less than 10,000 people have ever served in the U.S. House.
There is a number there, and only those people who've been there can understand it.
Go ahead.
I've said, look, one of the things that's interesting, and for different reasons, is it is tough.
Because you...
Until you've been there, and there's some good things about it, right, that you can only explain to people, but there's some bad parts, too.
I mean, there's a loneliness that I would tell people that, like, it's hard to tell people what it's like because, you know, there's very few people who can identify with it.
And, you know, there were times in which I tried to explain to people, and they're like, okay, well, that's hard because clearly it's just...
It's hard to explain to somebody what it's like to walk down the street and have 50% of the people love you and have 50% of them hate you.
It's just – you can't – someone just can't – I mean it's hard for someone to go, oh, I get that.
So – but to your broader point, like look, I believe – I am a very, very strong conservative both socially and fiscally.
But I also – look, the way Washington works is that a good chunk of the people are on the other side and believe fairly strongly in their convictions.
I respect that.
I think if you're going to get along with folks in this town, you've got to understand that they're not going to just cave because you have a good argument.
I sort of have gotten along very well with folks on the other side of the aisle.
Understanding that they're not going to change my mind and I'm not going to change theirs.
And I think that there's enough people that I've got to just chill.
There's times when people will see something on Instagram or Twitter.
I can't believe you are in the same room as so-and-so.
And it's like, really?
Calm down.
This is how this works.
We had a really good relationship when I was at the RNC with our DNC counterparts.
And it paid off.
I was able to go to DNC debates and go into the spin room and do stuff because the DNC folks and I had worked out a deal where we would do stuff.
And it worked out really well.
But it was those kind of relationships that pay off.
It's about like imagining the Founding Fathers never going into the same room.
I mean, they had radically different opinions about it.
Sean, you serve well.
You continue to serve everybody on your show on Newsmax Bystrom Company, and I enjoy coming on there and being with you.
Every night, 6 o'clock.
Tonight, 6 o'clock, ready to go.
But folks, we're glad to have Sean.
Sean, thanks for being a part today.
You bet, Doug.
Doug, thanks for having me on.
Folks, I don't know about you, but I cannot stand a towel that simply moves water around me after my shower.
I like a towel that grabs you, takes the water, gets it off of you, and does what a towel is supposed to do, dry you off.
I've had so many towels I bought over time.
Some were expensive, some were cheap, but again, when they just sort of moved the water around, I could have just stayed in the shower and stayed wet.
I need a towel that gets me dry.
That's where our friends at MyPillow come in.
They have towels, and you're not gonna believe the bargain that they have right now.
Mike and the folks at MyPillow have offered a six-piece towel set.
That's two bath towels, two hand towels, and two washcloths.
Regularly $109.99 for $39.99.
All you gotta do is have code word Collins.
You can go to MyPillow.com or you can call them at 1-800-986-3994.
If you want towels that actually do what they're supposed to do, dry you off.
You know, that's what we do here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
We talk about real answers and real solutions for a complicated world.
Well, sometimes you may not think that getting water off of you is a complicated process, but undoubtedly it is for some tile companies.
It's not for the folks at MyPillow who actually have a tile.
The MyTileLidge is a great investment for you, and right now you can get it on sale regularly $109.99 for only $39.99.
And that is with code word Collins.
Also, anything else that you want to go on there, you've still got the slippers, you've still got the MyPillars, you've still got everything that is on that wonderful website.
You want to go check it out.
Use code name Collins and get your discounts.
▲
Export Selection