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June 8, 2023 - Viva & Barnes
01:09:57
Interview with Sean Spicer! Viva Frei Live!
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Time Text
So I thought this was a centipede walking along the sidewalk.
It's actually a dead, dried up worm being carried by a bunch of ants just gliding across the sidewalk.
All of those ants carrying this dead worm.
For those listening on podcast, we're watching a video of a bunch of ants carrying a dead, dried up worm.
This is a dead worm being carried by a bunch of ants.
And it looks like a centipede.
Amazingly cool.
Look at that.
Alright, that's all we need.
Look, I told Sean I was going to start with this video because there is a political analogy in there of about a bunch of little army ants carrying the carcass.
It wasn't their kill, but it died of presumably natural causes.
There's a political analogy in there somewhere.
Go ahead and make it.
And now I'm wondering if Sean is thinking, my goodness, what have I signed myself up for coming on Viva?
All right, everybody, this is going to be amazing.
I have known Sean Spicer via the television, via Fox News, and via all of the other mainstream legacy media outlets for almost a decade.
He used to be Trump's press secretary.
And when this opportunity arose, I'm like, okay, I'm going to do a little more diving and I'm going to read.
His Wikipedia page to really get to know the true Sean Spicer.
And I just, you know, I briefly saw Sean right before we started and I said, is anything off limits?
And he said, absolutely nothing.
And then he said, Wikipedia is evil.
And I said, Wikipedia is kind of hilarious and we're going to get into it.
So if you don't know who Sean Spicer is, you should, you will.
And we're going to delve into childhood as we always do, come back to the present and what Sean's doing now and what he might have learned in his tenure as press secretary for the most hated Man in the history of American politics by at least half of the country and at least the majority of legacy media.
Bringing him in now, Sean.
I want to bring him to the stream.
Here we go.
Sir, how goes the battle?
It went well up until you talked about Wikipedia.
Oh, there's an anecdote on Wikipedia about your experience in university, which we're going to get to in a second.
Do you know where I'm going with that?
I was looking forward to this all week, and in a matter of about eight seconds, you have taken it away.
Wikipedia is very nice.
It does your military service justice.
Then it brings up anecdotes, which they can only bring up to embarrass, but we'll get there in a second.
Sean, we do this, the 30,000-foot overview.
I'm going to delve into your childhood a little bit just to understand as to how you got...
To decide to do what you did in life, because most people would run away from what you ran into, not run towards it.
30,000 foot overview before we get into childhood.
From me?
Yeah, who are you?
Well, look, I grew up as the oldest of three kids in a town called Barrington, Rhode Island.
My father was a boat salesman.
My mother actually was a housemaker, took care of us until I decided I wanted to go to a...
A private school in high school, and we scraped together some scholarship money and some financial aid, and she went to go work at a local university.
I grew up competitively sailing.
I went off to college, and then I got bitten by the political bug because I really found it sort of intellectually, like my intellectual awakening was sort of the idea of campaigning.
My dad was...
More of a salesman at heart than anything else, and he taught me growing up early, if you want money, you have to make it yourself.
So I sold greeting cards, birthday cakes, you name it, magazines.
And so I was an entrepreneur at heart, and I love this idea that in politics, all it is is basically marketing.
You're selling a person an idea, asking them to give money, asking them to show up somewhere, asking them to vote.
And so I really found a calling in politics in the early 90s, and we can get into the rest then.
Well, how many siblings did you have?
Or do you have?
I have two siblings.
I'm the oldest of the three.
Okay.
And are you the only one who decided to go into politics?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And growing up, religious upbringing, political upbringing, what were your parents like?
Great question.
So we're Irish Catholic.
My mom's from a one of five.
My dad's only one of two.
But both sides are from Rhode Island, which is like living in the same dorm in college.
You can't escape your family in Rhode Island.
Most people never leave.
So it really is a very small state where everybody knows each other.
We went to mass every Sunday.
I went to CCD.
We weren't overtly religious, but we were practicing Catholics.
But politics was never discussed.
My parents voted.
They attended PTA meetings, so they were civically engaged.
But I was the only one who ever expressed an interest in politics.
That's very interesting.
Despite not talking about it, were they leftist-aligned, more conservative-aligned, or did you not even know at the time?
You know, it's interesting.
So Rhode Island, we did elect some Republicans, but it was largely a Democratic state, which is interesting because it's a very Catholic state.
So they would complain about government.
I mean, I think as my father...
He became much more open about his political beliefs in this country, much more conservative.
I would say that my mom is right of center.
But again, there wasn't a lot of competition for a lot of races.
So it wasn't like you went out and completed your civic duty, but largely Democrats controlled the state.
More than anything, my father would complain about regulations, complain about taxation, talk about job creation and bringing business development to the state and things like that.
But it wasn't overtly political.
It wasn't Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal.
It was, here's why government sucks, and here's what people are doing to get in the way of job creation and business development, things like that.
More my father than my mom.
My mom never talked about it at all.
Again, and it was more because my parents were more concerned with actually putting food on the table than, you know, those big existential political questions.
So three siblings.
Did you say that you went to private high school?
So when I, I mean, here's a funny story.
So I grew up, like I said, in Rhode Island.
My dad's side of the family is from Newport.
My mom's side of the family is from Barrington.
Rhode Island's basically a U. Providence is at the top.
And Aquitnick Island, which Newport is down here at the bottom, and Barrington is on the east side of the state.
And my dad's side of the family in Newport, my mom's side of the family from Barrington, when they got married, she won the argument.
And my dad's office was still in Newport, and he commuted every day, which is where there's a private Catholic school called Portsmouth Abbey.
It's a Benedictine monastery.
When I was growing up, my grandmother on my dad's side would always say, oh, the smart boys go to Portsmouth.
She called it the Priory then because growing up it had been a Priory before it was an Abbey.
And I would sort of, I grew up, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh grade saying, oh, well, if the smart kids go there, I'm going to go there.
And my parents just took it as a joke.
Like, okay.
And then I started mailing away, pulling out little, you know, those cards in the back of brochures and saying, I want the brochure.
And my parents kind of humored me and were like, okay, if you're going to be this.
Interested in education, sure, we'll humor you.
And come the end of seventh grade, I was like, well, I want to apply.
And despite not having the financial means, my parents were like, great, if you're this invested in your education.
And to be honest with you, the only thing that I knew was that my grandmother had told me growing up, this is where all the really smart kids go.
This is where all the, you know, there was this allure of going to Portsmouth Abbey that my grandmother had.
And so I was like, well, then I should go there.
And my parents were like, yeah, right, whatever.
Well, I got in.
I actually did very well in middle school.
And so I got in.
And then, like I said, we sort of just put a financial plan together where I got some financial aid, some scholarship money.
My mother went to work for the first time.
And their view was, if you're serious about this, then we need to do what we can to support.
You know, our kids' education.
I was the only one of the three that attended any kind of private school.
And I was a day student, which meant Barrington was about 40 minutes from Portsmouth.
And so I would literally, I mean, it sounds like the classic story that every parent tells now, but I walked about a mile to the center of Barrington.
It's Rhode Island Public Transit Authority.
We call it RIPTA.
There was a bus that went through the center of town.
I'd put a token in the bus.
The bus would take me 40 minutes to the top of Corey's Lane, Portsmouth, and then I'd walk about another three-quarters of a mile down to the school campus, and at night it was the reverse commute.
So it took me about an hour and a half to get to school every day, but I was convinced that this was sort of like, you know, my ticket out of, you know, middle-class dome.
And, I mean, I'm Canadian, so high school starts in grade seven, but how old are you when you're doing this commute on your own?
Are you 14 or 15?
Ninth grade.
Ninth grade.
And now, I had my other question there.
As a student, you were rebellious.
Were you sort of defiant to authority?
Were you, you know...
I was a good student.
Did I do sneaky stuff here and there?
Yeah, well, there might be a few things that still have not come to light.
And this is back in the day when it was safe for kids to commute and school had not become centers for indoctrination as we're seeing today.
Or was it always the case?
No, no.
And so did I do a little, was I a little mischievous here and there?
And did I do a few things that might have, you know, in this day and age got me in a lot more trouble?
Absolutely.
But I think by and large, and especially by today's standards, I was a strong student.
I mean, my parents' view was, hey, if we're paying this money, you're going to study hard.
I was involved in a lot of activities and athletics.
And by no means was I like the troublemaker.
I mean, I did...
That being said, if you go back and talk to any of my teachers, there's a few times that I was asked to leave class because I was not exactly the most reverent student at times.
And had your teachers told you you're going to have a life in politics or you're going to become a lawyer one day?
The lawyer path was actually what a lot of them, if you had had to pin a lot of them down, they were like, you like arguing, you like making cases.
But again, I think part of this to me was more of an entrepreneurial side.
I wanted to make money.
I watched my father pound the pavement and my view was, I'll tell me what I need to do.
So I'll fast forward for a second.
My mother had gotten this job, as I said, she was the manager of East Asian Studies.
At Brown University.
And that just meant she was the, they called her the academic manager.
She was sort of the office manager for all of the department.
And I had been told by one of my high school teachers, you know, at that time in the late 80s, Japan was on the ascent.
And he said, look, if you could learn as an English speaker to speak Japanese, there's a lot of Japanese individuals that can speak English, but not a lot of folks.
In America that can speak Japanese.
And so I went off to college as a Japanese language major.
And to say that I sucked at it was an understatement.
I literally got a note from the dean at the end of the second semester that said, you know, please come see me.
Apparently a D in Japanese is a D in English too.
And so he was like, you might want to rethink this.
I mean, for anybody who has not tried to learn a second or third language as an adult, it's already difficult, let alone when it's entirely different characters.
Like, I was brought up, I speak Hebrew, French, and English.
And then you sort of lose the Hebrew as you don't practice it.
But the idea of being an adult and trying to learn a second language, that involves totally different characters, a totally different alphabet.
I mean, it's ambitious, and it's not for everybody.
So you go off.
Well, one last question about the family.
How many generations American?
When did they make their way over here?
Interesting question.
My great-grandfather on my father's side, William Spicer, is a Medal of Honor recipient.
He came over on the boat, joined the U.S. Navy, and then down in Guantanamo Bay aboard the USS Marblehead was a recipient of the Medal of Honor.
Basically, we're talking about my father, grandfather, and then that generation all came over.
Fantastic.
A Medal of Honor, for those who don't know, what do you have to do in order to receive it?
You basically have to demonstrate that your actions save lives.
There's a lot of verbiage that goes into the medal, but it goes all the way up to the President of the United States.
But it's for heroic action, usually that leads to the saving of several lives.
Okay, fascinating.
So you go to university.
What university did you end up going to?
The name of it is Connecticut College.
Tried to study Japanese, at some point moved away from that, and then you get into, I mean, Wikipedia describes it as government.
That's it.
So what the heck does a degree, a BA in government look like at university?
So it's basically like political science.
They just called it government.
So it's the same thing as a political science degree.
I mean, in terms of, we studied international relations, domestic politics, campaigning, all that kind of stuff.
And you had an interesting experience.
I don't know if it was as traumatic for you as it seemingly was to have made its way into Wikipedia.
You had a nickname in university, which was an interesting one, that led to some conflict between you and whatever institution gave you the nickname of Sean Sphincter.
So the funny thing about that is, well, to your point about Wikipedia making something bigger than it was, There was a writer from the Washington Post that went back and was trying to surmise that somehow this was the moment that I realized how evil the media was.
The incident, to be blunt, was such that if you can remember back in the early 90s, there was no thing like spellcheck and it wasn't the way that it is now where your phone auto-corrects you.
It was very rudimentary word processing.
And the guy who was the editor of the college newspaper was actually somebody that I'd known very well.
We had sparred a bunch in different political classes.
And so, you know, the point of that was that it was more like there was no way that that mistake could have made if it wasn't intentional.
I was a member of the student government at the time, and so I was very outspoken on a lot of issues.
And my point was, it was more of, this wasn't some big university, like UCLA or even Harvard or something like this.
We're talking a college with a thousand people.
Your class was 300 and change at most.
And so the editor and I had known each other a long time.
And my point in all this was, this was clearly an intentional act to try to undermine an argument and an effort that I was involved in.
And so, but I mean, how does it even, I bring it up almost as a joke because I read people's Wikipedia pages and they're so wildly outrageous, depending on your political alignment, that they go and fish up an embarrassing thing or what they think is embarrassment and post it as a prominent fact about your upbringing.
I mean, how did this story even see the light of day after decades, presumably?
I mean, I don't know, maybe you wrote about it in, you yourself wrote it somewhere.
How does anyone find out this story so that it appears on Wikipedia?
First of all, I want to start with the comment that you made earlier.
It's a fascinating thing.
I actually did a video about this the other day.
Look at...
Anyone on the right, their Wikipedia page.
It's literally like, you know, in fourth grade, he missed the toilet when he peed.
Anybody on the left that has their thing, it, like, overlooks prison sentences and puts them up for sainthood.
Wikipedia is a problem, and I don't want to go off on a tangent, but I will just say, one of the problems that I have with where we're headed in AI is one of the things that AI is utilizing, there's three basic programs.
One of them is Wikipedia.
And if you're using Wikipedia as your basis and it's wrong, And it's filled up by a bunch of leftists.
This is what our future looks like.
And so, again, I don't want to get off on a soapbox there, but this is part of my reason for concern.
With respect to the story itself, there was a reporter from the Washington Post that was doing a profile on me.
And when I say he went back, I think you hit the nail on the head.
This guy went back and was talking to people I went to college with.
And coming up with the wackiest stories.
I mean, in the story, he talked to this guy that, like, kind of technically was a roommate of mine.
And I say that because within, like, two weeks, he ended up moving out of our, like, quad room.
And he was telling this guy stories about my college that were completely false in terms of, like, what I had studied, the subject.
It was all in an effort to sort of try to find that.
You know, what you're saying, that embarrassing moment, that anecdote that he thought would be featured prominently.
And the idea that, as I just explained, this was sort of like me and a guy named Jeff, who was the editor at the time, kind of having a little spat over some issues.
And as I maintain, I think it was an intentional way to just sort of embarrass me at the time.
But the idea that that makes it into a Washington Post profile on Wikipedia just tells you where the left is these days.
Sean, we can get on this tangent a little bit because Wikipedia deserves to be publicly and based at every opportunity.
But this is how your profile starts.
During his tenure as White House Press Secretary, Spicer made a number of public statements that were controversial and false and developed a contentious relationship with the White House Press Corps.
The first such instance occurred on January 21, 2017.
The day following Trump's inauguration, Spicer repeated the claim that crowds at Trump's inauguration ceremony were the largest ever at such an event, and the press had deliberately underestimated the number.
Can you believe that this is your intro, this is how your bio starts on Wikipedia, that your most egregious...
And it gets better from there!
Your most egregious lie.
Misrepresentation was the number of people at Trump's inauguration when we are witnessing daily lies of the highest order from the current press secretary.
I just wanted to bring that up because it's hilarious.
Actually, you know what?
I think that's funny.
I have not done this.
To be blunt with you, I actually intentionally don't look at Wikipedia, my page in particular, because I just don't need to get frustrated.
And the thing is, there's no way to change it.
I can't go in there and edit it.
But I guarantee you, if you go look at Corinne Jean-Pierre, it's going to say something like, Corinne Jean-Pierre served as the 30-whatever-second press secretary of the United States and is currently awaiting word from the Vatican on her sainthood.
I'm going to pull it up right now.
I'm not wasting the time on that.
All that to say, I wouldn't get frustrated by it.
I would take it as it is a sign of success and it is a sign of being over the mark.
But Wikipedia, where it is fair, is about your military service.
And this is something phenomenal because not everybody does this.
I've never had...
A day of military training and military service, and I deeply admire anybody who has done it, even if I vehemently disagree with their politics.
You went on to serve in the military.
Yes.
Explain what that's like in terms of training, in terms of day-to-day, how long you did it for, and what experiences you had doing it.
So actually, it's an interesting question.
As I mentioned, my great-grandfather was a Medal of Honor recipient.
My grandfather worked as a civilian on the Navy base in Newport.
I grew up on the water.
As I mentioned, my dad sold boats.
Growing up in Rhode Island on Narragansett Bay, you're kind of forced to...
Not forced, it's the ocean state for a reason, right?
I mean, you're out there in some capacity.
I cleaned boats as a kid to make money.
And I'd always had this desire to serve.
And back in the day, the military wasn't structured the way it is now in terms of the opportunity and the training.
And so every time I went in to talk to them about signing up, they'd say, okay, well, we need eight weeks to do this.
And I was like, I need to make this much money to help pay for this.
And it wasn't all working out.
Well, after I got out of college and then began working in politics, a couple of buddies of mine...
And one in particular who had known about this and kind of shared a similar interest and said, hey, there's a new program that the Navy's doing.
I'm actually going through it.
I'm joining it.
I'd love to get you hooked up with it.
It's a commissioning program for people who have particular specialties.
And it's like randomly, public affairs is one of them, but it's a lot like cryptology, oceanography.
There's doctors and nurses, chaplains, and public affairs was one of them.
And so I went through this program down in Pensacola, Florida.
I got my commission, and I actually joined the Navy at 29 years old.
I just completed my 24th year, if I think I got my math right.
I actually am still in.
I am stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, as the officer in charge of a unit down there.
People think that the pinnacle or the summit of military service is active combat without necessarily appreciating everything that goes, the sacrifice that goes into it, even if you never, I mean, Don't see active combat.
I mean, if you could flesh it out, just like, what is the sacrifice, the time dedication that goes into actually joining, serving?
You spend a great deal of time away from home, away from friends and family.
I mean, for those who've never done it...
Let us know what it's like.
So it's an interesting question because I think each of the services has a little bit different of a culture in terms of what they do and how they do it.
I've served, as I said, 24 years in the Navy.
Two years of that was on active duty.
And the rest of it's reserved.
But I'll give you, I mean, later this afternoon, I drive down in Norfolk.
I'm going to be working with my unit for the next three days.
So on an irregular basis, you're kind of going down.
You're making sacrifices to not be at work.
You don't get time.
I mean, obviously now I've left Newsmax.
I'm on my own.
But, you know, it's not like most employers.
Newsmax never gave me a day to serve in the military.
You know, it was always using vacation days.
And, you know, that's the sacrifice.
I mean, it's not...
Look, I love doing this.
Some of my greatest friends are there.
I can't tell you how much...
I get back through serving, finding this cause that's greater than me and doing my little part.
Look, you've got cooks.
You've got CBs that build stuff in the Navy.
You've got lawyers.
You've got SEALs.
Everybody does their part for what they're good at or what they're trained at.
And that's what I think is so awesome.
You go down there, you put the uniform on.
It doesn't matter who's president.
You're going, okay, I'm here to serve this country and whomever the commander in chief.
I love the idea that I'm doing my tiny little part to just do something to, at this point in my career, help shape the next crop of both enlisted and officers that serve under me.
But then you're going off every year for sometimes a minimum usually of 12 days, sometimes 20. I was out on the USS Ronald Reagan a year ago for 20-something days.
I was in Yakuza, Japan last year.
Just stop there for one second.
You're on a boat at sea for 20-plus days.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that could be a cruise for some or a nightmare for the claustrophobic.
There's no pool, I'll tell you that.
There's a gym, but there's no pool.
Oh, my goodness.
Okay, fascinating.
Okay, now what we're going to do, Sean, we're going to end this on YouTube, go over to Rumble, and get into some of the juicy stuff, you know, the serving for Trump and everything else.
But I got one question I'm going to ask here that we're going to answer on Rumble and Locals.
Having actively served over the last two decades, and, you know, more or less depending on the year, have you noticed, or is there an objective demoralization of the military today, given what's going on politically?
Compared to two decades ago.
But before you answer it, hold on.
I don't want to start again.
I want to end it on YouTube.
Ending on YouTube, everybody, head on over to Rumble for the answer to this question and many more now.
Sean, is there something of a tangible, palpable demoralization within the military of the United States today?
Yeah, two things.
First off, one, I am so in awe as a guy, like I said, who grew up as a guy that was like a marketer and entrepreneur, like the way that you transition to Rumble and Locals, like I just was like in awe of just how well you do that.
So I probably will be stealing it just so you know, but I just kudos, like I'm always in awe.
A great salesman.
And I found how you did that was so good.
Learn from my mistakes.
I still get chewed out because I don't intro enough to let people know at some point we're going to move over to Rumble because that's where my exclusivity lies.
But that's it.
And I'm learning as I go along the best system.
You don't want to drop off YouTube because that's where the biggest market is, the biggest reach.
But you want to drive people over to Rumble.
Then you want to drive them over to Locals so you can get more and more exclusive content.
And I'm going to get to some Locals exclusive questions for you towards the end.
Because I'm over there, too.
I'm at SeanSpicer.Locals.com.
But let me get to your question.
First of all, I am required to say that any opinions are mine and mine alone, and not those of the Department of Defense, nor the Department of the Navy.
Look, here's what I will tell you.
I got in when Clinton was president.
I've served through Obama, through Bush, through Trump, obviously, and now through Biden.
I will say that every president and those people that they appoint have priorities.
And so you will see a little bit of a tweak and a shift, depending on who the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Navy, etc.
are, as well, obviously, all that comes down from the president.
There's definitely been a change in terms of culture that I've seen over the last few years.
There's no question about that.
I don't know that there's any evidence about...
I think the word you used was demoralization.
I will say that there's no question that I think there has been an adaptation to the culture that this administration wants to support.
And I appreciate, you know, I don't ever want to get anybody I'm interviewing in trouble, even if I'm ideologically disaligned with them.
And so, like, when I, you know, I realize now I ask questions that could get people into trouble.
I asked Carrie Lake.
A question that would get her to criticize the court system in front of which she was currently pleading her case.
I was like, maybe that was a bad question because I'm not trying to get anybody into trouble.
No, no, no.
And there's no bad question.
It's just making sure that when you serve in the military, you don't give up your right to free speech.
They maintain that all the time.
But what they ask of us is that, number one, we don't do anything in uniform.
And obviously, I'm sitting here in civilian clothes on my own time.
But two, that if you're talking about...
Your service, that you're being very clear that it's your personal opinion and not that of the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.
And I understand that because we don't want to allow people.
We want people to understand that the second that that uniform goes on.
And I mean this with every fiber of my being, because like I said, I got in with Clinton as president.
I've served through Bush and Trump and Obama.
At the end of the day, if you're going to join the military, you join because you want to serve this country and whoever is the current commander in chief of the United States.
And it's not a, there's never going to be an equivocation about that.
And that's one of the greatest things about our military and our country is that that's how we operate.
And we never want people to believe that there's any blurring of that line.
That and I can also imagine that people who have connections and know what's going on don't necessarily want to allude or suggest to the rest of the world that there might be fissures or weaknesses within the military.
I'm just particularly obsessed with this one question because I've been trying to learn as much as I can about the fall of Rome.
And one of the things that seems to be...
An objective fact about the fall of Rome was the weakening or the lack of discipline of progressive eras of the military.
And one wonders if what we're seeing right now in recruitment videos, you're seeing ideology infiltrating recruitment videos, which might impact quality in that you're valorizing.
ideology over performance, whether or not that's leading to a weakening of the military, which other countries might seize on for the purposes of gaining political power.
I will say this.
I think the questions that you're asking are the right ones in the sense that we should always be thinking about...
Both the current training, what are we doing to make sure that everybody is ready to go, ready to fight, if that word comes down.
But secondly, how we're projecting ourselves.
I mean, people around the world have come to know the United States is the strongest military.
And the reason that we're the strongest military is not just because of the equipment that we have, but because of the people that are behind it, driving it, coordinating it, executing it.
And so, you know, we need to project strength.
We need to project the fact that people are there and they're ready to go at all times.
They're ready to serve.
They're trained to serve.
And they're willing to go do whatever it takes to defend the freedom that this country has come to know, both here and to make sure that we advance freedom abroad.
I want to bring this up also just because this will be the concrete illustration of my point.
This was a tweet from U.S. Air Force yesterday.
June is Pride Month.
Get out of here.
The Department of Air Force proudly recognizes and celebrates generations of LGBTQI plus service members and their contributions to our Air Force.
And then they go ahead and restrict replies.
And I made the tongue-in-cheek reply, retort, retweet, quote, tweet, whatever you call it.
It's great.
I mean, it exudes such confidence that you're going to take on Russia, China, and Iran, but you can't take on an open comment section on Twitter.
And I say that makes everybody look bad.
But maybe I'm just...
The armchair quarterback saying, I don't understand the broader strategy of what the U.S. Air Force is doing.
Well, look, I think I will say this without commenting specifically on the Air Force.
Here's what I would say, because I did a video on this on YouTube the other day.
I don't, as I said, I mean, I go back to sort of the business capitalist roots of this country, right?
And I was critical of Target the other day, and everybody's dissected this from a cultural.
And I looked at it more from a capitalistic standpoint.
According to the CDC, this is the government, the CDC, 0.5% of our population considers themselves trans, and of that, 0.36% considers themselves a trans woman, I guess is the way to say.
So Target takes the front of their store, the crown jewel of retail, and tailors it for people who wear a tuck bathing suit.
Now, you take...
0.36, as I went to a liberal arts college, so I can't do the math here, of a half a percent.
And you're going to give that the crown jewel.
That just, to me, doesn't make business sense.
And so the question I have is that if you're looking at things like recruitment, sales, marketing, are you reaching an audience that makes sense at the detriment of people who might go and buy other things, right?
So you saw the backlash with Target.
And the question is...
Did they prevent more people or did they deter more people from going in the store that would have bought things than they could have possibly ever gotten by the number of, you know, what is a store stock?
Six, seven, eight tuck bathing suits?
I don't think they probably sold two.
And so there are things that I think are counterintuitive to what's happening in our culture right now that just don't make common sense.
And that has nothing to do with supporting...
You know, a movement or the right of people to do something, but it's like we're going so out of the way now to do things that are counterintuitive to the goal that's stated.
If you're truly caring about recruitment, if you're truly caring about business sales, are you doing something that is in direct opposition to what your goal is?
Well, I mean, I guess the idea is they're saying, I don't care if it's 0.3.
And I think those numbers are wildly inflated in any event.
And those numbers are only getting more wildly inflated because of this, what I do believe is a social contagion.
But they're saying, look, I don't care if it's 0.1% of the market.
The economic value to virtue signaling that hard is going to yield us dividends in the long run.
And lo and behold, it's not anymore because people are getting fed up.
And I think even people within the community are getting fed up of being objectified for the purposes of corporate political profit.
But maybe that's just my own wish.
But, I mean, Sean, now I guess we have to get into the good stuff here, because it's going to relate into this.
How the heck do you get into the level of politics that you got into?
Specifically, I mean, I guess we want to know, leading up to becoming the press secretary, your political trajectory of your career, and then press secretary, what that was like.
Whether or not you knew that you would be public enemy number one, persona non grata, for decades to come because of the political backlash.
Just tell us how you got into this in the first place.
So real quick, I realize that Japanese is not going to be the language that propels me to wealth or greatness.
I had taken a government course.
I found myself kind of arguing with the professor in these seminars because I was like, I don't see that as the proper role of government.
As I said, I wasn't particularly...
Political growing up.
But I found myself having this intellectual awakening where I was like, hey, I actually love the idea of what the role of government is and then campaigning and how to get votes.
And so I started to literally do everything I could.
Towards the end of my sophomore year where I was literally going, volunteering for campaigns.
I worked in the Connecticut State House.
And I was like, okay, I'm switching my major.
I like this politics and government thing.
And I was sort of addicted to it.
And so, like I said, I was volunteering for campaigns.
Towards the end of college.
And then I always say that I was a minor league baseball player.
Like, I got jobs.
I got my first campaign in 1994 as Republicans were trying to win back the House under Newt Gingrich for the first time ever, utilizing the Contract of America.
I lived in somebody's attic in eastern Connecticut.
And I made, what is it, $1,500 a month.
And then I kept going, like, we did really well.
And so I would, like, get...
Something off of that.
And like I said, the minor league baseball players, I would go to a congressional office and they'd be like, hey, could you work on the campaign?
I'd be great.
So I moved from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida.
I would go wherever the next bigger game was in increasingly making a little bit more money.
And when I say a little bit more, it was like going from like 21 to 21.5 to 23. You know, it was always enough to get by, but I didn't really care.
I loved what I was doing.
And so I kind of worked myself up in the early 2000s.
I became the spokesman for the House Budget Committee.
From there, I went to what we call the House Republican Conference, which is the office that Elise Stefanik now runs, actually.
At that point, I went over and finished the last three years of the Butch White House as the assistant U.S. trade representative, as the spokesman in that.
In that office.
Then I went on, I was mobilized.
I went on active duty for about two years.
When I got out, the RNC was hiring because they had a new chairman that came in, this guy named Reince Priebus.
And some mentors of mine came to me and said, hey, you'd be great to run the comm shop at the RNC.
I had always thought that would be a great job.
My wife and I were thinking about starting a family and she was like, look, if this is really like, let's get it out of your system, go do it.
I mean, to me, this was the big leagues, like actually making it to be.
The communications director for the Republican National Committee.
And so I did it.
One term became two.
Two terms became three, which was six years.
But the nut of it is this.
And I'll kind of, because I literally write, my first book is called The Briefing, where I lay it all out in like 300 pages.
But so normally, and I'd done this in 2012 with Romney, the RNC kind of partners with the nominee.
And I always say it becomes the JV team.
You get the jersey, you get to go to the team party, but you're never a starter.
And so if Romney had won in 12, I'm sure I would have gotten some job at the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs or something, which I'm sure is very nice.
But you're never in the big team.
And so Trump comes around.
And I treated Trump like I treated every other candidate, which was that my view was grassroots voters decide who the nominee is.
And then our job at the party, I always said, was like the league.
Like we didn't care what team made it to the Super Bowl, the World Series, or whatever sport you care about.
You just want a good game and you want to win.
And so Trump wins.
And to be blunt, a lot of people sort of poo-pooed him.
And I was like, well, he's a candidate.
We need to treat him seriously.
And I started to develop a relationship with him.
And I'd go up to Trump Tower and I'd help on projects.
And he becomes the nominee.
And the bottom line is not that many people were willing to do it.
I mean, I literally had a story come out in the Washington Post.
The story that actually was about the conversation that you and I talked about not too long ago that was titled The Outside Guys Inside Man.
And it was all about all these people in D.C. crapping all over me saying that I was throwing my career away helping this guy Trump.
Well, look, as I said, my view was he won the nomination, folks.
I don't get to go, yeah, I don't like him.
My job and my commitment was to support whoever our voters chose as their nominee, and Donald Trump was that man.
Well, he and I developed a great relationship.
I was willing to go out and do things and help him and back and forth to Trump Tower in New York and flew around on the plane, all that kind of stuff.
I'll save you the ending, but basically he wins.
I'd like to say that I went through some massive interview process, but there weren't that many people that were qualified, that had government experience, that had been supportive of Trump, that he actually had a relationship with.
And so he says to me, literally, it was December 22nd, 2016, at about 1 o 'clock, and he calls me.
I'd been putting together all these organization plans, and that's what he said.
Hey, put a plan together.
Put this for me.
And I just kept doing it as I was asked.
And he calls me one day and says, okay, let's go.
Let's get it out.
And I said, okay, what are we getting out?
He goes, you're going to be the guy.
Make it happen.
And so that's it.
Then fast forward, you know, to answer your question, I never anticipated the vitriol that existed.
I mean, I had been doing media for 20-something years.
I knew a lot of these folks.
I'd interacted with them.
And man, did they just hate Trump and the agenda?
And it was like a switch went off and it was like, you are the enemy and we are coming after you.
And, you know, so let me just, I'll end by saying this.
I had a vision of what I thought the job would be like.
I mean, I had known Ari Fleischer.
I knew Dana Perino.
I thought, okay, I got this.
And not even close.
No way.
Well, when you say that there weren't many people willing or, you know, running after the job, is that, do you think now in retrospect, they knew that, They knew what would be involved in accepting this position, that they would actually...
No.
They just didn't think he could win.
I mean, the funny part about this is, I mean, I was looking through my phone last night.
I was looking for a picture, and in May of 2015, okay, so Trump basically becomes the de facto nominee early May after the Indiana primary.
But until August, he's not the nominee in Tampa.
I mean, in Cleveland, I'm sorry.
But at that point, I was like, hey, if he's the de facto nominee, I owe it to him to come up and help him.
I had a staff of 75 in D.C. that worked putting out communications at all levels.
Think about all the different races.
He had a staff of five in communications.
This was not a presidential race.
And so he was like, anything you can do to help, to amplify the message, to give us the tools.
But people, we were trying to hire people and no one thought we could win.
Jason Miller, Hope Hicks, Dan Scavino.
I mean, there were some committed.
Those guys worked their tails off.
They worked what would be the equivalent of five or six jobs.
And that's not even close to being an exaggeration.
It's probably an underscore.
But we were like, hey, we got a job to do and we're going to go do it.
But we would offer people the positions that would be killed for in a normal presidential year.
And they were like, no.
I'm not putting my name on that campaign.
I'm not giving up my job.
I'm not attaching my name to this campaign or to Trump.
And so when he won, there was literally a handful of people at the senior level that were even possible appointees to some of these jobs.
That's interesting.
And it's not the case that even after he won...
People now say, well, now this is a bandwagon.
Well, yeah, sure.
There's a little bit of, oh, hey, yeah, you won.
Can we come to the party?
And can I do this?
And can I do that?
But as I said, I mean, the key aspect of my description was he was getting the phone calls, sure.
And people were putting themselves into the mix.
But there were very few people who had a relationship with...
I mean, he had seen me interact with the media with him.
He had seen me fight for his...
You know, for things that were in his best interest.
And so he was watching it going, hey, I've seen you.
And you did this when nobody else was willing to do it because of your loyalty and your commitment to this campaign and to winning.
And so, yes, there were plenty of people after the win.
They were like, hey, you know what I'd like to do?
And it was like, hey, thanks.
It's those people who show up to the party after everybody's done it or don't stay around to clean up.
There were plenty of those folks.
There weren't plenty of people in September and October when we needed them.
Let me ask you this, because this, I imagine, is stuck in your memory for good or for bad.
The first time you step up on that podium to act as press secretary...
I mean, look, I guess it's a closed room.
You're not really scared because it's not a massive auditorium, but you understand what's going to happen in the media after this first announcement.
What was it like?
Butterflies, rage, excitement, and what was the trajectory of the experience after the honeymoon might have worn off?
So there were two days, right?
That first day that you recall that...
You mentioned it in Wikipedia, where we were at the office.
Trump had called me earlier that morning and said, hey, we got to correct the record on this ridiculous reporting about how many people were at the inauguration, and this is insane that this is what they're focused on.
I didn't anticipate that to be the day that it was for a lot of reasons.
It was a holiday.
It was the third day of a three-day weekend.
We didn't anticipate that being...
Actually, it might have been a Sunday.
We didn't anticipate that being a day that we would brief.
Obviously, that wasn't my intention.
So yeah, I was nervous as hell because I didn't know what was going to...
And look, you asked at the beginning of something.
The biggest regret that I ever have is that...
And I go into this a lot more in my first book, but I had been working with Trump now really close after the campaign.
We were literally flying around talking about...
And I'd seen him...
Comment on a couple interactions I had with the media.
So when he said to me, I want you to correct all this, the biggest mistake I ever made was not running it all by him and saying, this is how I plan to lay out the case.
This is how I want to say this.
This is what I want to do.
I just assumed, I got it.
I know what you like.
And that to me will always be the biggest thing because after that first press conference, I went out there and I was nervous as hell.
But when I walked back into the office and the phone rang and it was the White House operator and she said, the president's on the phone, he was pissed.
You know, everybody says Spicer went out there to please the president.
He was, that's not what he wanted.
I thought I knew what he wanted, but man, he was furious.
What were you thinking?
That wasn't what I want.
And I was like, and I thought to myself in that moment, why did you not run it by him?
Why didn't you call him and say, okay, this is what I want to say.
Is that reflect how, you know, your concerns?
The following press conference that I had my, what they say, my first real one where I took questions, whatever, I was nervous as hell because I knew that after that first performance, if I didn't do well, I was done.
I mean, there was no question in my mind that it was like an episode of The Apprentice where it was like, Sean, you got another chance.
Unfortunately, you're fired.
You know, it wasn't, it was not, there was no third chance.
This was it.
And I worked.
Diligently.
I treated that like a PhD dissertation.
And I walked out of there.
They said the president's waiting for you in his private study.
I walked back there and he just gets up and gives me a bear hug.
And he's like, that's the Sean I know.
And I was like...
That's pretty fascinating, actually.
And how long did your tenure as press secretary last?
So I offered my resignation on July 21st at about 10 a.m.
I left my last day in the White House was actually September 1st.
At the time, we were about to undergo a major sort of reorganization.
And I said to the president that morning, he had decided to make some changes.
And at that time, the other thing that people forget is for the fourth time, I was dual-headed.
I was the press secretary and the communications director.
The president wanted to bring in a new communications director, a guy by the name of Anthony Scaramucci.
Agree with that decision.
And I also felt like if you're going to find an escape hatch, this is the day to do it.
And I told the president, hey, look, you need a reset.
You're never going to get that reset if I'm still here.
You already have part of a new team coming in.
I will, let me give you that reset now.
He was very gracious and said, you know, no, you're part of the team.
You've always blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, Mr. President, look, I appreciate it.
It's very kind of you.
You're never going to get the reset you want and need if I'm the guy that's still sitting here.
So I stepped aside, but I said to him at the time, look, there's a lot of new people coming in and I'm willing to stick around to the end of next month to help get everything settled and help make this transition work.
And he was like, that's great.
Little did I know that Anthony would last 11 days and then we would go on and do a bunch of stuff.
You know, my technical last day is actually September 1st, 2017.
And before we get into what you did afterwards, because, you know, you go from press secretary now, I don't know if we call it like a free agent, but you're going to forever be regarded as Trump's henchman, Trump's paid liar.
And I'm saying this without judgment.
It's garbage.
You're reading Wikipedia again, aren't you?
No, no, no.
Now I'm drafting Wikipedia as a political partisan hack would draft Wikipedia.
Historically, what was the, like before Trump?
Because it wasn't a normal presidency.
His treatment was not normal or decent.
But before Trump, what was the turnover rate for press secretaries in any ordinary presidency?
Did you have one last four years, or was there always turnover?
Oh, no, no, no.
Generally speaking, roughly about two years.
Okay.
And with Trump, I can think of three offhand.
Four.
Four.
That's still not that bad, but the treatment of Trump was not normal.
I don't think anybody's going to disagree with that.
No, but it took, I mean, it took like dog years off my life.
It was actually kind of funny.
Right after I, right after I saw him, like, you know, obviously every day, but I had left, I had announced that I was leaving and I came into the Oval Office one day and he goes, my God, you look so much healthier.
It's not a joke.
I mean, you look at the way presidencies have aged presidents, but anybody who doesn't understand that type of stress might never understand it.
So you tend to your resignation, you're out.
What happens when you're out?
Because you're out now, but it's like, in some people's minds, you're like a political war criminal walking the street.
How do people view you once you're out of the administration, but still the paid henchmen of the administration?
So there were three kind of groups.
I think the first would be the ones that you described, the people that were like, you went to work for them.
You said bad things.
You're a horrible person.
I hope you die.
Then there were the flip side, which is the sort of the people who loved it and were like, thank you for serving the president and for fighting the media.
And then I'd say there was another sort of the third group, which was sort of the, hey, you got out.
We're giving you the benefit of the doubt as if like I was some kind of prisoner.
And we're like, well, you got out.
So we're going to allow you to exist.
But those are kind of the three buckets.
The upside for me was that because it was early in the administration and people knew that there was definitely going to be at least another three years of Trump, there was a lot of opportunities to speak, to go to do things client-wise, where people just wanted some insight.
How do I navigate this administration?
Can you come talk to me about...
Normally, you would know the person.
They would have been a senator or a governor.
People didn't really understand who this guy was, how he ticked.
The cabinet, my goodness.
Again, very unorthodox in a lot of ways, but we knew each other.
They were like, who is this Steven Mnuchin guy who had been financing films?
Really smart banker, financier type, but not the kind of person that had come up through Washington.
People were I'm interested in having me be part of, you know, explaining how the Trump administration worked.
When do you start writing or when do you make the decision to write your first book?
That's actually a fantastic question because, ironically, my friend Katie Pavlich has me on tape saying I'm never going to write a book.
And what had happened was I got out.
Dana Perino and my agent at the time said, listen, writing a book.
That is exhausting.
It's a ton of time.
And you could be off giving a speech that paid you X amount of money or sitting in a holdup writing a book.
And they're like, you know, and then you got to go on a book tour.
And I'm not really sure you want to do that.
And I said, okay, right, right, right.
I don't want to do this.
And then what happened was I started, I kept reading things like Wikipedia, but it was more like a New York Times story, or I'd go do these events that I was talking about, and people would raise their hand and say, hey, I understand that one meeting that you beat a bunch of kittens to death and let them bleed out on the floor with babies underneath.
And I was like, no, that never happened.
And then they'd say, hey, I understand that you cried one night, da-da-da-da-da, and that your family, I mean, and I was like, no, that never happened.
And I finally called.
My agent at the time said, all right, I got to write a book.
I'm so tired of hearing what I thought and did that I need to at least tell people my story and at least have it documented so that I can always say that I recorded my own history.
Whether you believe it or not or buy it or not, that's up to you.
But my thought was, I'm so tired of having the New York Times and others state for the record how I felt and what I believed.
All right.
Just so you know, I'm also sharing the Amazon affiliate link to your first book, which is, what do we call it?
The Briefing, Politics, the Press, and the President.
How long does it take you to write this book?
What's the process for having a book published that might contain secrets in terms of clearance?
So, you know, first of all, I've maintained now an active security clearance for 24 years.
I'm pretty clear as to what's classified, what's not.
Nothing that I wrote about even came close.
I talked to the president.
I told him I was writing a book.
I told him the nature of it.
If you do read the briefing, it's basically the elongated written version of the conversation that you and I are going to have.
It's who I am, what my family's like, my trajectory in politics, kind of some of my personal thoughts.
So I didn't ever submit it for clearance because...
You know, I'm familiar enough, there was nothing in it that was even sensitive, never mind classified.
But normally, if you were to discuss deliberative things, which I did not do, so if you said, hey, when we discussed killing Soleimani, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then you would submit it for clearance and say, hey, I tell these five stories, you know, and they'd say, hey, unfortunately, the only way that someone would know that is through a source or a method.
You can't describe it that way.
I did not go down that road.
So I was fine.
I had, as I said, I was represented at one point.
I went in and I said, here's what I want to say.
It was really interesting because at that time they were like, well, you say bad things about the family and about Trump.
And I was like, no.
I want to tell a story about me and my family and my upbringing and my beliefs.
That's it.
Full stop.
If you want someone to be disloyal or a tattletale or whatever, you got the wrong guy.
I have been in politics a long time.
I need people to trust me.
I need my friends to trust me.
And if you think that making a quick buck at the expense of your reputation is worth it, then you're not somebody I want to know.
And I had promised the president and everyone around, look at my record, look at my career.
I've been in some pretty amazing rooms.
I've never had anything leak.
I've never spoken ill of a previous employer, despite what I may think of them personally.
And I was never going to undermine that to make a quick buck.
And so my agent went out, sort of put an outline together.
This is what he wants to say.
We had a few phone calls with different publishers.
And then it was sold.
And so you sit down.
I had an editor that helped me kind of get my thoughts together and sequencing and take some stories.
But the thing that was really interesting is normally there's a much longer tail to get it published.
The Regnery, which is the first publishing house that I sold my first book to, Nope.
And we did very well.
And so what did you ever get, despite not disclosing anything secretive, did you get accusations of having violated?
Okay.
Nope.
What's the trajectory after this?
You write the book, and then you get into what we call, let's just call it legacy media, mainstream media, but you become involved in the media.
What does your career do after leaving the White House?
So I did a bunch of consulting.
I did a lot of appearances on different news.
I actually wrote a second book called Leading America.
Ultimately wrote a third book called Radical Nation, and then I just published a children's book called The Parrots Go Bananas.
All of those books are at SeanSpicer.com.
But I was on...
Season 29?
28?
28 of Dancing with the Stars.
I gotta stop you there.
Do you regret that?
No!
Oh, God, no, no, no.
I loved it.
I would do it again in a heartbeat.
One of the greatest experiences of my life.
I suck.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
I have no rhythm and I'm a horrible dancer.
I loved it.
It was a fantastic diet.
I lost a ton of weight.
I got to meet some great people.
I had a ton of fun.
I got to involve my family in it.
My kids got to come out to California a couple times.
It's wholesome, good stuff, right?
You're watching people learn to dance and have fun.
And so I think considering some of the trash that's on television today, it's a great family that you become part of.
If you look back at some of the people that have been on Dancing with the Stars.
I mean, even Kardashian's been on it, but I mean, you have Rick Perry and Sarah Palin and Tom DeLay.
I mean, it's a great thing, and it's not political.
It's just fun.
And the other thing that was great, and it was funny because people actually caught on to this and got a little pissy with it, is that there's two parts that your vote come from, right?
You get the judges that are judging you on both progress but also performance, and then half of your vote comes from the audience.
And I was like, well, I know I don't have rhythm.
I got kicked out of the band in sixth grade by Mr. Morrow when I tried to play a drum.
So I knew that wasn't going to happen.
But I knew I could campaign.
And I know how to run a campaign.
I can't dunk a ball.
I can't play music.
I can't draw anything.
But I can create a winning strategy on a campaign.
I literally treated that show like a campaign.
And people kept saying, how is he advancing every week?
Well, because I'm jacking up the vote, you idiots.
I mean, I literally made campaign commercials.
I had Christy Swanson and Dean Cain, Mike Lindell, help me make campaign commercials.
They were funny kind of commercials where it's like, I endorse John Spicer dancing with the stars.
I'm sitting here.
I actually, hold on.
I got this in my home studio here.
I had buttons made up.
Spicer Arnold.
I mean, I treated it like...
And we had so much fun with it.
We literally went out and I did radio interviews on conservative radio on the days that the show did.
I got all the way to the quarterfinal on a show that I should have gotten kicked off on the first night.
Well, I say that in terms of the regret because...
It is fun.
I have no doubt it's an amazing experience, but nobody likes seeing their political enemy have fun, and so it becomes the source of mockery and ridicule by the other side of the media that doesn't want to see you have fun, doesn't want to see you succeed.
They were vicious.
Like I said, the stories were like, how does he continue?
The showrunner for Grey's Anatomy was like, I'm going to resign.
I mean, it was like, dude, it's a dancing show, you morons.
This isn't a war.
No, it's not.
You make it political, you ruin it.
I can't have my ideological enemy on a show.
I have to boycott Dancing with the Stars and make fun of them.
You remember the show started with, we launched the show on Good Morning America, and then you go do this press line afterwards.
And so we go, I'll do this.
And the funny story, let me give you the backstory on this.
So they had started negotiating with me, asking me to come on the show right when I left the White House.
And I said, absolutely not.
The president even called me.
He's like, Sean, are you going to dance with the stars?
And I said, not right now.
The idea that I'm having this conversation with the President of the United States.
Because I was doing these speeches and I had events and all this kind of stuff.
Well, three years later, I developed a good friendship with one of the executives there.
And she said, well, if you're ever thinking about it.
And I thought, well, they only ask so many times.
And you know what?
This is a time to have some fun.
But I had a conversation with the higher-ups, the muckety-mucks.
And I said, listen, here's the deal.
There's going to be blowback.
It's going to happen.
And I need to know that you're going to have my back.
When the sponsors, the advertisers, and the other idiots come to you, if you're going to throw me overboard, then let's just not go down this.
And they said, okay.
And so they went all the way to the top and said, look, Sean needs a commitment that we're going to have his back.
Well, literally the day after we go on Good Morning America, we announce this thing, and then we do this press line.
And all of a sudden, somebody just hands me a phone, and it's like, you need to see this.
And it's a statement from Tom Bergeron, the longtime host, saying, you know, I wish we could have kept politics out of this, and I'm disappointed by that.
And I was like, I thought it was going to happen, but I didn't think it was going to happen like 60 seconds into this thing.
And so right off the bat, Bergeron goes, you know, talks about how, like, I was a bad pick for the show.
And I mean, that just set the tone going forward.
It was like, you know, people talking about resigning and boycotting, advertising the show, et cetera, et cetera.
Oi, Sean.
Okay, it's outrageous.
All right, so Dancing with the Stars, on to Newsmax.
When do you start with Newsmax?
And also for those who have never worked in that industry, tell us what that is like.
So I had a bunch of conversations with different folks about potentially doing a show.
I signed a deal with a company called Lionsgate out in California to do a show.
And Newsmax had kind of made some overtures over the years.
And finally...
And I kept saying to them, when you're ready to put something in writing, come back.
And so they came to me and said, hey, we're blowing out the network with real original shows.
It had previously just been a bunch of simulcasts of radio programs.
And I was like, okay.
And so they put a deal together for me and they laid it out and said, this is how it would work.
And you'd have an hour and you could do this and do that.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm ready to have some fun.
And so we hire a team.
I mean, the network does, not me.
And we put together the building blocks of a show.
And I thought, okay, look, I've been in the military.
I've been, I've worked for like 10 different members of Congress.
I was at the RNC for six years, two presidential campaigns in the White House.
Like I know the media and I know how Washington works.
And I think every other host is basically a glorified pundit on television for the most part.
They have an opinion.
They think something.
They heard something.
They read something.
I've done it.
I've been in the room.
I can tell you what it's like to sit in a situation room.
I can tell you what it's like to sit in the Speaker of the House's office when they're making a big decision and what goes into that.
I can tell you what it's like on a campaign to make a big decision about what direction to go and how a poll is read, how it influences decision-making, etc.
And I thought, hey, let's take this show.
And bring in the expertise that I can tell you and bring you in the rooms in a lot of these big decisions.
Get the guests that people might not always get.
And so we launched the show on Super Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020.
And we ran it for three years, becoming one of the network's highest-rated shows and helping to grow Newsmax as a bona fide network, becoming the fourth-largest news network in our cable systems.
Now, I know some of these answers to these questions because I've been watching a lot of your interviews before this, but we know the weaknesses of mainstream media, legacy media, even if we happen to like ideologically Newsmax a little more than CNN.
The format is such that it creates for limited discussion, severe time constraints.
You might get the Tucker Carlson effect where certain things you cannot talk about and if you do, expect to be out the next day.
What were the benefits?
And the inconveniences of working with an entity like Newsmax.
Well, look, I mean, the benefit is this.
You get a paycheck guaranteed every week as long as your contract exists and you get a staff and the infrastructure that exists.
Okay, so that's the upside.
Here's the downside.
The cable news audience on average is between 60 and 70 years old, which is fine, but you're not exactly reaching the next generation.
Number two, to your point, They can tell you, we don't want you to cover this subject, or we do want you to cover this subject.
You can't have this guest, and we want you to have that guest.
It's their show.
It's their rodeo.
Yes, your name is on the show, but they're driving the train.
To your point, this conversation that we're having can't exist on cable.
It just can't.
When my contract was up, they made an offer for me to stick around for another two years.
And I had some conversations with some other folks who had been doing things kind of in your world, building a show, building an audience.
And I said, I would rather go in that direction.
This is where I think the future is going.
32% of Americans now have cable or satellite.
That's way down, right?
I mean, it's a dying industry.
And my thought was, I would rather bet on myself as I have and market something and build something.
So we have created what's going to be a new show that will come out in August.
I'm on Locals, seanspicer.locals.com, where I'm asking people to come into the community and help us.
With ideas, feedback, tell us what works, what doesn't.
But, I mean, look at the numbers that you have on Rumble and YouTube alone.
Your audience exceeds, like, CNN, I mean, every day.
I'll stay modest.
It exceeds CBC in Canada.
I'm joking.
Sunday night with Barnes.
It's amazing.
But, yeah, no, sorry, go on.
No, no, no, but I'm just saying that, like...
The view to me was, you know, look, I'm in my early 50s, and I was going, okay, I can either try to hold on to this ship, which is frankly cable, which is taking on water and going down, and hope that it gets me out, or I can build something that I know will be enduring, and build an audience, get some people who give me feedback, grow something.
And so I'm on YouTube.
I'm on Rumble.
If you go to my YouTube page, it's just Sean M. Spicer.
I have one on Rumble as well.
But watch the videos.
Tell me what you think.
We're trying to give people, again, the same insight.
So I've been doing a video a day where we go in and explain how do you collect delegates?
What's the RNC's debate criteria and who's going to make the stage?
But I think as we...
We have more people interested in politics.
What I'm trying to do is get people to give me topics if they want some insight on.
Maybe I can do it.
Maybe I can do the research.
Get a guest.
We kind of cover stuff because there's so many times when people just say to me, why can't we just do X?
Or why didn't the president do Y or the Speaker of the House do X?
And part of me is not to always give you my...
Like, say this is good or bad, but to explain the process, because I think unless you understand the process, you can't make the appropriate change.
So if you don't know how to support a candidate that will get them, advance them, then you could be doing a lot of things that don't actually move the ball forward.
And part of what I'm trying to tell people...
Here's how the system works.
If you want to make change, here's how you can do it.
And these videos on YouTube, the Locals community, are all ways that I can bring people into this and that I'm not the guy just spewing information.
But I'm saying, tell me what you want to know more of, what I can do better, what I can provide more information, and go from there.
And so this Locals community, SeanSpicer.Locals.com, is a place where I'm bringing people in.
And having that conversation, I did a whole thing on CNN the other day.
I've got another one that I'm doing, I'm shooting later today, explaining why, I mean, Chris Litt, the head of CNN, why he really got fired.
Is mostly because the talent at CNN did not want to adhere to this new vision of being actually journalists.
They like being activists.
They resisted this idea of doing what Trump did, is coming in and changing the status quo and saying, we need to put America first.
Chris Litt was coming in and saying, hey, we need CNN to be back to being journalists.
And they were like, no bueno.
We're going to undermine everything you do.
But understanding what really happened, I think, is important.
It's the time constraints on legacy media.
Like when you talk about these pundits, the pundits, and I put them in quotes, the only reason anybody regards them as pundits is because in six minutes, ten minutes, or three minutes, you don't have time to show what buffoons they actually are and how weak some of the positions they espouse as punditry actually is.
The long format, I think Joe Rogan showed it a long time ago, is what people actually want.
And then there's other ways to shorten it and snip and clip for the shorter attention spans.
That's right.
No, I mean, because the conversation that you and I are having where you're saying, can you explain this?
And it's not a five-second thing.
Maybe it's a 50-second thing.
But the problem I have with a lot of these pundits is I'll put them on, let's say, Republican strategists.
And I'm saying, what have you ever strategized on?
Have you actually ever been on a campaign?
Have you ever worked?
And I'm not saying that that's the be-all and end-all, but I don't watch sports.
And the guy who played kickball in high school, I don't want him doing analysis on a football game.
Like, I want to know somebody who's been in the game can tell me why that player went right instead of left, why they passed the ball this way or left.
I can go, oh, I get it.
That makes sense.
I want an analyst to be able to analyze things.
You don't go to a doctor because they shopped at Home Depot.
They go because they're good at what they do.
They've got medical expertise.
They've got training.
They've got experience.
And I think too often these quote-unquote pundits on cable.
Are people that sort of fit the suit, if you will.
Sean, how much time...
I know you're...
The person I was doing the organizing with said you might only have an hour, give or take.
How much time do you have left?
I'm a little over, actually.
Okay, give me 10, if I may.
Can you give us 10 minutes on Locals?
Because I got...
Well...
I will give you 10 minutes on Locals.
Yes.
Okay.
I'm going to end on Rumble now.
This is the segue into the Locals part, everybody.
Head on over to Locals, vivabarneslaw.locals.com, and I'm going to ask Sean some personal questions about the current state of politics and the Trump v.
DeSantis stuff, but I don't want to get him in trouble.
So whatever you're not allowed answering, don't answer.
But head on over to Locals, and we're going to take some of the questions there.
Now, okay, there's a technical issue always on Rumble where sometimes the last minute gets cut off.
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