Sean Spicer's brief stint as White House press secretary was a mess of mistakes and inaccuracies, and his post-Trump career hasn't gotten any better. But despite the "lack of credibility" that cost him a cable news job, the guy has been out promoting his new memoir, The Briefing, about his tumultuous time in the White House—a book that's garnered reviews as varied as "littered with inaccuracies" to "a bumbling effort at gaslighting Americans."
So to hold Spicer accountable for his time as Trump's mouthpiece, BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis interviewed the former spox on Monday, using the time to savagely question the man about the various "alternative facts" he spouted during his White House stint. For 15 glorious minutes, Maitlies rips into Spicer, questioning him on everything from the Access Hollywood tape to the actual size of Trump's inauguration to the reasoning behind the term "alternative facts."
“You played with the truth. You lead us down a dangerous path. You have corrupted the discourse for the entire world by going along with these lies," Maitlis said, while Spicer squirms awkwardly on video call from New York.
In response, Spicer blames the "many false narratives and false stories that the media perpetrated," and ultimately explains that he was only doing his job in communicating Trump's "thoughts and his ideas" without interpretation.
"You were his press secretary and I know from what I have read you care about the freedoms and the institution and the democracy on which your country was built," she continued. "This is the office of president spouting lies or half-truths or knocking down real truths and you were his agent for those months."
"I gave him the best advice and counsel that I could in private," Spicer tried to argue at one point. "Whether you like them or not, those were his thoughts and his feelings."
It's an incredible interview and deserves to be watched in its entirety—one that some on Twitter wish was more commonplace in the US. Still, Maitlis doesn't get around to asking one of the most pressing questions about the book—namely what exactly Spicer meant when he called Trump "a unicorn riding a unicorn over a rainbow." Hopefully, the next interviewer who sits down with Spicer will remember to bring that up in-between brutal owns.
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