Sean Spicer book summary: The most important moments as White House press secretary reveals life working for Trump

Spicer helped spin, twist and reject the truth on behalf of Donald Trump – but now he has promised to reveal the reality of speaking for the president

Sean Spicer resigns: The White House Press Secretary's most memorable moments

Donald Trump's mouthpiece is finally talking for himself.

Sean Spicer's book – The Briefing: Politics, The Press and The President – has just been published and offers and unprecedented look into the workings of the White House and its sometimes bizarre, often controversial relationship with the press.

And we will be reading the book live, just as it makes its way from the press itself.

It is the latest in a series of bombshell books detailing life inside Trump's White House. From Michael Wolff's incendiary Fire and Fury to James Comey's combative A Higher Loyalty, many of Mr Trump's foes and confidantes have attempted to peer inside the president's head and work out what is going on.

But Spicer's is the first major release from one of the president's allies. And what an ally he has been: Spicer was famous for defending Trump over and over, even when that meant outright lying or appearing to suggest the holocaust didn't happen.

Now the erstwhile press secretary and communications director will finally give his insight on working for Trump, and helping create the image of the president we have today.

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[24 July 2018 15:31 · Andrew Griffin]

Spicer addresses the president's tweets. And he sees a little weary about it all, bringing it up in conjunction with the night after the president's address to congress, when he undid some of the goodwill by tweeting bizarre accusations at the media.

In the face of these outbursts, the media often expected me to be an ombudsman if not an outright apologist for Donald Trump’s tweets. I never did that. And I consider my stance on this to have been a matter of principle. The job of the press secretary is to communicate the thoughts and views of the president when he or she is unable to do so. It is not to interpret the president’s thoughts and words. It is not to massage or tweak them. Sure, I made suggestions and gave my advice and counsel all the time, but in the end my job—and that of any spokesperson—was to accurately reflect the person I represented.

He wearily says that the tweet about Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had given Trump's critics "permission to return to form". But he only really seems to suggest that the tweets are a strategic failing – never does he say that the tweet or any others were bad, only that it was a shame they went out and polluted other messages.

[24 July 2018 15:34 · Andrew Griffin]

Another of Spicer's many hapless moments comes as he's talking about leaks in the White House. He is concerned that they are coming from within his team, and thinks that the staff are using private messaging apps to do so. So he gathered his team together.

“We’ve got to be able to work together,” I said. “We’ve got to be able to trust each other.”

So, I asked them to allow me or one of my deputies to look at their phones, whatever they were carrying on them, from personal phones to the iPhones issued by the White House. We looked for Confide, WhatsApp, Signal, and other messaging apps that could potentially violate the Presidential Records Act.

That was leaked immediately, of course.

Trump told him off, "like a disappointed parent", and he felt that he had made a mistake because he was under such pressure.

[24 July 2018 15:36 · Andrew Griffin]

Spicer continues to deny the truth of the "Russia narrative" of course, and attacks the press for promoting it. He admits issues with Jeff Sessions and others, of course, but for the most part seems set on rejecting it as a false story.

Eventually he mostly seems tired of it:

The die was cast. The Trump administration was condemned to invest a lot of energy and attention into the investigation, distracting it from policymaking. Given the legal complexities and murky nature of the subject, I began to refer Russia questions to outside attorneys.

[24 July 2018 15:42 · Andrew Griffin]

Spicer seems set on making clear that Trump is a kind and compassionate man in private. That might be true, but the stories he tries to do it with aren't especially good examples.

Here he's talking about the fact that people criticise evangelicals for supporting Trump despite the fact he is said to be "lacking in Christian values". Spicer disagrees.

To show that, he talks about a time during the transition when Trump declared that he wanted to go to church in the morning. Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, who were both at the same dinner, nodded in the affirmative, and looked towards the one remaining person – Sean Spicer.

Spicer said that it was a kind offer but that he was going to Mass. Trump doesn't seem to understand that Spicer is a catholic and so that is different to the service that Pence, who is an evangelical, would attend.

"Then I realized something—the president-elect was a little crest- fallen. He had seen our whole excursion as a brotherly moment, a sharing of the church experience. It made me feel bad to say no to him."

The message that Spicer takes from this story is that while Trump might not be able to quote scripture, he is definitely a man of "Christian instincts and feeling".

There are a lot of other messages you could take from that story, though.

[24 July 2018 15:44 · Andrew Griffin]

Here we are into a chapter that sounds like the one we've all been waiting for: "Memorable Moments, Memes and Mistakes".

Spicer sorts all of the things he remembers most about the experience of being in the White House into those three boxes, he says.

Moments include times when he saw history being made. And the memes and mistakes are those when he became history himself: becoming a story "sometimes as a result of my own actions and sometimes as a result of the media creating a meme".

[24 July 2018 15:47 · Andrew Griffin]

Here we are with a brief review of the time that Spicer appeared to suggest that the Holocaust hadn't happened.

He notes that he has helped "countless" people undergo media training. That consists mostly of making sure they know where to look and what to do with their hands – but includes a number one rule "not to compare anything or anyone to Hitler or the Holocaust".

As we now know, Spicer broke that rule. He walked into a briefing and suggested that "even" Hitler had never used chemical weapons on his own people – unlike Assad.

Spicer says that happened because he had earlier been in a briefing in which Secretary Mattis said that Hitler had not used chemical weapons on the battlefield. And so when we went into the briefing those words were still ringing in his ears – though not ringing quite clearly enough, clearly.

[24 July 2018 15:53 · Andrew Griffin]

Even amid this horrifying moment – which was a grave one for the country and for the White House – Spicer has this nearly-endearing buffoon character to him.

I read the body language of not only the reporters but also my own staffers along the side of the room. I was beginning to realize I had mis- spoken badly.

[...]

In the heat of the moment, I still hadn’t realized what I had said wrong. I was so fully focused on condemning Assad that I failed to see how badly I had stumbled by omitting that phrase, “on the battlefield.”

By this point, I was feeling flustered, still not fully understanding what had just happened. My remarks were not quite right, and I had the alarm- ing sense that I was digging myself into a deeper hole with each word.

This may have been the lowest moment I had in the White House. I alone had fumbled; no one else had made me do it.

[24 July 2018 16:00 · Andrew Griffin]

We are onto the most substantial part of the book: memes.

For this part of the book, Spicer just goes on to talk about a load of memes he has seen about himself online: about spinach in his teeth, wearing a flag pin upside down, one where he was accused of stealing food from a mini-fridge.

But ultimately, memes are serious business. Memes overshadow the news, and stop attention on policies; memes can elevate tiny details into national moments of outrage. Sean Spicer is definitely not upset about the many memes, just like he is not upset about Melissa McCarthy making fun of him and SNL and in fact he found it very funny actually.

[24 July 2018 16:08 · Andrew Griffin]

After all that: "I was about to become the subject of the mother of all memes."

The mother of all memes, it turns out, is when Spicer was reported to have been hiding in some bushes before a press briefing.

He was not hiding in the bushes!! 

There is a row of tall bushes on the perimeter between the slate path that leads to Pebble Beach and the driveway that goes to the West Wing of the White House. I was on the path the entire time, a very short path, maybe ten yards to the driveway. Not only had I never hidden from the press, I had gone out of my way to make myself available with a camera- friendly opportunity. A retrospective story about the Trump White House later included coverage of that night, showing very clearly where I was and where I wasn’t.

He goes on for a long, long – long! – time about how he wasn't hiding in the bushes. The truth is that Spicer wasn't hiding in the bushes, of course. But it does make him seem rather silly to devote such a long time and reams of paper to the fact that he was absolutely not hiding in the bushes. Being sympathetic, it is probably a very annoying thing to have people say about you – but there are certain things you just have to move on from.

[24 July 2018 16:10 · Andrew Griffin]

Another set of strongly expressed denials about a meme that most people have probably forgotten by now. The day after Comey was fired, Spicer decided that he would do his scheduled day on duty at the Pentagon. It was widely criticised, since it meant he would not answer the press's questions.

Spicer is very wounded, and expresses it, saying how proud he is to be in the Navy. It's all fair enough but the latter part of this book is turning into a series of indignant denials of memes that have now mostly passed into internet history, if people cared about them at the time.