Despite a recent New York Times piece that says Sean Spicer is trying to “rehabilitate his image,” Spicer says that he is “happy with his image.” The former White House press secretary will not be joining any major news organizations, as some have done in the past, The Washington Post reports, but Spicer says that he is doing stuff he finds “funny and interesting.”
Back in August, a story in Politico reported that Spicer had signed with Worldwide Speakers Group. But The Washington Post reports that the big five — NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News and CNN — will not be offering Spicer any sort of deal. A big issue for the big five is Spicer’s credibility. He spent his time at the White berating White House correspondents, peddling misinformation and sticking up for Trump, who constantly bashes the press.
The Washington Post also reports that Spicer is unhappy with Glenn Thrush’s interview of him, headlined: Sean Spicer Says He Regrets Berating Reporters Over Inauguration Crowds. Spicer told The Washington Post that he, of course, has regrets, but it is more of a “global statement.” Spicer says Thrush did a “masterful job of taking what I said for his own purposes.”
It appears that Spicer doesn’t actually have regrets over the media bashing during his tenure because the media is “largely a liberal group of people willing to overlook” over errors with Democratic administrations. The Washington Post, in an opinion article, combats this statement by saying that the media “went overboard” on a story about how emails showed the White House was planning Benghazi talking points.
Spicer has other complaints about the press too: they are not effective at policing their own mistakes for one. And The Washington Post opinion article writes that it sees the validity in that — explanations on retractions and corrections can be scarce, and “genuine apologies” for mistakes should be more frequent. However, Spicer is not really one to talk, writes the Post. After he defended Trump’s claim that Obama ordered Trump Tower to be wiretapped, he never apologized.
The Post writes that while Spicer is critical of the press, he is not bitter, and even gave names of journalists he thought did “good work,” such as Jennifer Jacobs and Margaret Talev from Bloomberg or Carol Lee from NBC News.
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