BUSH-LEAGUE White House press secretary Sean Spicer can’t hide from the perils of serving in the Trump administration.
I ve always found the attraction of sadomasochism a bit of a puzzler. I understand its theatrical appeal—the Catwoman dominatrix outfit, the dripping dungeon, the nifty props (whips, candles, cat-o’-nine-tails)—but, from the perspective of the submissive, all that kneeling, groveling, and ee-owing under the booted heels of Mistress Sybil sounds exhausting. Not for me, thanks. But at least consensual S&M is a private arrangement with an agreed-upon safe word to bring a halt to the action, should it get too hairy. Far more mystifying are the open-ended, plainview degradations in which pride and morale are squeezed in a vise and the only opt-out words are “I quit.” Future psychohistorians and political head-scratchers will ponder the phenomenon—the pathology— of how and why so many men and women of semi-upstanding reputations and plump résumés allowed themselves to be coarsened and humiliated by Donald Trump, getting nothing in return but grief, ridicule, and possible indictment. “They sacrificed themselves for this guy?” will be the haunting cry. New Jersey governor and failed presidential contender Chris Christie, a plus-size bully at his Tony Soprano worst, fetched Mc Donald’s meals for Trump and was treated as a flunky at a Trump rally, with the candidate curtly telling him to vacate the stage (“Get in the plane and go home”), and didn’t even get rewarded with a Cabinet position for his valet service. Former New York City mayor and failed presidential contender Rudolph Giu lia ni, who has been wearing 9/11 as his Superman emblem for longer than is decent, debased himself by defending Trump’s “Grab ’em by the pussy” statement on the talk-show rounds, yet he too was left standing at the altar. Jilted, the two of them may have lucked out, however, having been spared the captivity and turmoil of those who did make the cut. Consider the tormented souls working inside the Trump White House, especially those in the press office tasked with putting the best face on an administration which each day grows more gargoyle. Perhaps a few of them will squeeze a memoir out of their Marat/Sade experiences, but that is a large price to pay for the loss of your soul, a dank spot in history, and becoming a national laughingstock. There must be nights when Sean Spicer springs awake covered with fear sweat like Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate, wondering how this all happened.
Before Spicer signed on as Trump’s designated patsy, a position more formally known as White House press secretary, he had served his nation during the Bush II presidency as the Easter Bunny for the annual egg roll, and his party as communications director of the Republican National Committee. He was no Trumpian true believer during the nomination campaign. While at the R.N.C., Spicer criticized Trump’s ster eo typ ing of Mexican-Americans and the sneers at John McCain’s military rec ord. But something about the cut of his jib or the bite of his bark must have appealed to Trump. Picking up his cues from his boss, Spicer came charging out of the gate in his first press briefing, lambasting the media for underestimating the turnout for Trump’s inauguration, an insult to Trump’s size-queen pride. Spicer’s overture statement was a farrago of false assertions, misleading stats, and embattled attitude, putting those Beltway press-corps punks on notice that there was a new sheriff in town. It was no way to start a presidential honeymoon, but this testy belligerence was presumably what Trump wanted, and in the early press conferences Spicer maintained the brusque, patronizing, staccato Psycho Dad demeanor, giving the impression of a basement boiler about to blow. He also made stupendous gaffes, such as criticizing Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad by claiming that even Adolf Hitler didn’t “sink” to “using chemical weapons,” the gas chambers apparently having slipped his mind, and referring to the Nazi concentration camps as “Holocaust centers,” making one wonder about the quality of the history taught at Naval War College, where he got a master’s degree.
Capitalizing on Spicer’s anger-management agonistes and blunder bursts, Saturday Night Live geniusly cast comic wrecking ball Melissa McCarthy as Spicer, each press briefing descending into slapstick chaos as she deployed the lectern as a battering ram. It became as instantly defining a shtick as Chevy Chase’s pratfalls as President Ford back in the Iron Age of S.N.L., and Spicer himself contributed to his madcap mad-dog caricature when he was spotted hiding in the bushes from reporters after the firing of F.B.I. director James Comey, which was later clarified as not hiding in the bushes but among the bushes, which did nothing to dispel the gifs of Homer Simpson back-fading into the hedges.
After initially praising Spicer for bringing in boffo ratings, a consideration past press secretaries never had to factor into their performance reviews, Trump began to grumble and carp, practicing that time-honored art of blame shifting, as if the P.R. problem were with those delivering the president’s message rather than with the beautiful agenda he’s laid out on the banquet table. Bottom line, Spicer lost the confidence of the president, and, lo, the leaks began that Spicer’s role might be reduced, a replacement might be wafting in from the wings (Fox News’s Kimberly Guilfoyle flaunted her name for consideration), or, perhaps, an understudy could be promoted to the starring role (Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose sound bites are fingerlickin’ good) … the classic Washington dripdrip- drip ritual of public emasculation.
Imagine the treadmill of Sean Spicer’s day. He plays flak catcher at the press briefings, trying to bluff a roomful of scoffing, skeptical faces that the ship of state is sailing regally across the ocean blue; gets yelled at by Trump for sundry inadequacies; checks out the newsfeeds to see that his position is dangling from a key chain; and the next day has to craft a response for some tweet Trump unleashed at five a.m. that contradicts what he assured the press the day before … an ever spinning wheel of misfortune. It could be worse. President Richard Nixon was caught by a CBS News camera at a New Orleans event spinning Press Secretary Ron Ziegler around and shoving him—a mortifying episode, though Nixon later apologized. President Harry Truman’s press secretary Charlie Ross died of a heart attack and was replaced by Joseph H. Short Jr., a notorious hothead, who also died of a heart ailment. “I feel as if I killed them,” Truman lamented. James Brady, Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, almost made the ultimate sacrifice as well, taking a bullet during the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life in front of the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. The shot left Brady paralyzed. If the worst Spicer and his successors have to wrestle with is job insecurity, they will have gotten off easy.
It would no doubt suit President Trump just dandy to be able to do away with the press office altogether and conduct his business unsupervised and unobserved, much as he did his real-estate and casino dealings, exercising executive privilege long before attaining the chief-executive spot. No more daily press briefings, no more traveling reporters dogging his trail, as few press conferences as possible—just let Sean Hannity give him an on-air shoeshine now and then. Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, whose permanent scowl makes plant life wither, has already constructed an exclusionary zone around himself, behaving less like the country’s top diplomat than an autocrat answerable to no one. He ditched the media for his important Asian swing in March to Japan, China, and South Korea, and stiffed them again for a news conference he held in Riyadh during Trump’s Mideast visit. And, lest we forget, NBC and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell was hustled out of the room when she dared lob a question during Tillerson’s photo op with Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin, a fine way to treat the First Lady of the American Theater.
Yet perhaps news junkies and democracy owe a nod of gratitude to the Trump presidency for not putting up even a pretense of caring about the public’s right to know, freedom of the press, the state of diplomatic relations, and keeping us updated on Jared Kushner’s trips back and forth from the netherworld. By trying to brick itself off from scrutiny and accountability, and treating the press like plague locusts, the Trump administration incentivized reporters to lace up their Woodwardand- Bernstein cleats, work the outside angles, dig for buried treasure. Thanks to Trump, Vice President Mike “Ice Man” Pence, Tillerson, and the other officers of the Black Lodge, we’ve witnessed a reveille call in major newsrooms, a resurgence of animal spirits, and a renaissance of investigative reporting, journalistic bombshells bursting in air. Fake news, prepare to die.