Sean Spicer Wrote A Book. The Reviews Are Not Kind

Sean Spicer left his role as resident Trump's first press secretary one year ago, and to mark the occasion, he's releasing a book called "The Briefing" about his experience with the Trump campaign and administration. It is, according to the early reviews, not good.

In perhaps the harshest review of them all, ABC reporter Jonathan Karl (writing in the Wall Street Journal) says "The Briefing" is "littered with inaccuracies," is "light on insider detail" and "annihilates strawmen."

Mr. Spicer's book is much like his tenure as press secretary: short, littered with inaccuracies and offering up one consistent theme: Mr. Trump can do no wrong. Mr. Spicer has not been well served by the book's fact checkers and copy editors. He refers to the author of the infamous Trump dossier as "Michael Steele," who is in truth the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, not the British ex-spy Christopher Steele. He recounts a reporter asking Mr. Obama a question at a White House press conference in 1999, a decade before Mr. Obama was elected.

[Wall Street Journal] 

The Washington Post's Erik Wemple has little good to say about the book, and is struck by how weak Spicer's attempt to come to terms with his actions as press secretary:

Even a half-witted political memoir would grapple with such a disconnect — perhaps by acknowledging some fault in the boss, or perhaps by comparing his low points with those of other presidents. Yet "The Briefing" isn't a political memoir, nor is it a work of recent history, nor a tell-all, or tell-anything. Rather, it is a bumbling effort at gas-lighting Americans into doubting what they have seen with their own eyes as far back as June 2015... To hear Spicer lecture about errors, one might suppose he'd show some concern about the false and misleading tweets that Trump blasts daily to his 53 million followers.

[Washington Post] 

NPR's Annalisa Quinn notes that "The Briefing" has some merits, including his discussion of Washington's conservative circles and the interplay between the media and social media, but gets hung up on Spicer's continued lies: 

Spicer leaves out important context and doubles down on some of the lies he became famous for as press secretary, including his absurd claims about crowd size at Trump's inauguration. Spicer's transparency on some points also makes his moral double standards more disappointing. For instance, he denigrates Hillary Clinton for being married to Bill Clinton, who has been accused of sexual misconduct. "Many people had to ask themselves: if what those women said is true, what kind of a woman would stand by a man who did such things?" Probably the same kind of person who would stand by a president who bragged about sexually assaulting women. Or who would praise former congressman Mark Foley as "smart and ambitious... and fun to be around" — without mentioning that he solicited nude photos and sex from teenage boys employed as congressional pages.

[NPR]

In a one-star (out of five) review, The Telegraph's Harriet Alexander found "The Briefing" a major disappointment:

Entitled The Briefing, it is Spicer's attempt to clear his name. His first press briefing, when he berated the bemused reporters for downplaying the size of Mr Trump's inauguration crowd, set the tone for his seven month tenure at the White House. At times hostile, at times hilarious, his briefings got higher ratings than the actual soap operas airing at the same time. So how has he managed to make his account of the time so dull?

[The Telegraph] 

While The Guardian calls it an "an essential narrative by a non-family member who once possessed Oval Office walk-in privileges," it also notes how Spicer massively undercuts Trump's current line that Paul Manafort wasn't deeply involved with his campaign:

Inexplicably, Spicer does his best to undercut his own and his ex-boss’s credibility. When it comes to Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, Spicer’s story appears to have evolved. For three consecutive pages, The Briefing: Politics, the Press and the President graphically details how Manafort beat back the efforts of Never Trump Republicans to steal the presidential nomination. Spicer gushes: "How Manafort and company did this was a scene out of 1950's politics – alternating between carrot and stick and sometimes bat."

[The Guardian]

https://digg.com/2018/sean-spicer-book-briefing-is-it-good