Same strategies in 2014 the party to sweeping victory in 2016, prior to the mustsee republican primary debate sean worked on behalf of the party to restructure the base format trading more informative and fair debates. Seans efforts at the rncs chief strategist and medications director landed him a spot in pr weeks power 50 list for2016. The last join us at the Reagan Library in july 2018 his book the breathing, politics, the press and president. He had a virtual discussion about his brandnew book leading america examines the upward battle instrument is half to face the media, hollywood, academia and big tech. We now invite you to enjoy our Virtual Program coming to you from our air force one Leadership Academy oval office with sean spicer and reaganfoundation Institute Executive director john hi bush. Sean spicer, it is great to have you with us at the Reagan Library and obviously all socially distance and a long way awaybut congratulations, really great book. I had a lot offun reading it so i know its her second book. Congrats on the great reed. Its a shame not to be back at such a Historic Place and i want to give my first book to her, it was actually just so refreshing to come out there and have a discussion with you and answer questions so its great that we get to do it but its a shame it cant be inperson. When the world opens back up again sean wed love to have you. So put it on your calendar. Now, this is her second book. You have been since you left the white house and when you wrote this book, just as i expected, you took the opportunity near your first chapter to tell your story about dancing with the stars and why you did it and the whole decision process that led to that. And i wonder if you talk to us about your experience. Would you do it again, you feel like it was good for your career and just get into that for us. So as im in the book i was asked when i left the whitehouse i said no for a lot of reasons i go into. Most of which are because im a horrible dancer and i have nobody. And its a huge Time Commitment i didnt have so the long story short is that i continue the conversation with the executives there. I walked through the whole process in the book and i finally came to a point where i said to myself, you dont get that many opportunities to do things that are on different and at some point people just stop asking and they dont go, so i thought okay. This is the last time and i had developed sort of a friendship and a bond with some of the executives there had been very helpful in the first interaction. I said this is a good idea and we walked through it and i finally came to the realization that this will be fun area and im bad it only this so it will only last two or three weeks and i can check the box and move on area and so i said yes and i walked through this. You mentioned in the chapter book, i knew that this there would be some headwinds, i knew the leftwould lose their mind. I knew the media would go nuts. I just didnt realize how quick ill soon and how visceral area then it was just interesting to see, it was like everything got consumed by the other, what you cannot fill in is he working as hard, then he thought politics was just so, it was an introduction to me in a world i had never been in because it was sort of like this mashup of the different cast members and where theyrefrom , lamar odom and there was sort of a sports thing, a music thing with some of the cast members but then you were physically in hollywood and dealing with the headwinds and i found that most people, not just around the show but even that i bump into in hollywood and la were nice kind people. It was almost like people had to ring a bell at one point and go just remember, hes a republican, he works with trump and maybe like i dont like you anymore. It was challenging as i may never made anything political. I didnt want to be. The whole show, the beauty of it was it was this distraction from politics and it was this fact you could have a fun, civil good conversation with people like we used todo. And not feel like everything waspolitical. So anyway, i enjoyed it. They tell you at the beginning of the show that its a family. And its sort of like one of those catchphrases they throw your way. Youre going to love it, its going to be a family and i said yeah, yeah and i honest to god i count it as one of the best experiences of my life. I met some amazing people that i still stay in touch with today. Im going to be visiting with some of them in the next couple of weeks as i travel around to different places and we reached out and i said i know youre coming to my town and its not just the cast members , if the people who do security. Who do the publicity. Who do the for Food Services on the stage area. I mean, it really was and im glad i did it. I had a blast. I learned a bunch of stuff and i honestly if they called me today and they said were doing another season i come back in a heartbeat. That was my next question is if given the opportunity would you do it again and it sounds like you would. Its like its good wholesome fun and i talk about this in the book but of all the reality shows, there is no pride if you win dancing with the stars. You get a glitter ball and i joke in the book i say unless your aficionado, theres no value. You can go to tiffanys court sell it at some of these, maybe you can put it on ebay but theres no huge cash, 10 million and you get a recording contract or become a professional dancer so youre there to have fun and cool parties everybody there tears for each other area that youre up against yourself. So its almost like one of those things where you get to be cheering on everyone else, theyrecheering you on. Youre not trying to knock someone out. Its not like survivor where youre trying to get rid of them. The closest thing i can think of in my life where i took flyer like that, i became a judge for a miss americapageant and i caught the same kind of flat that youre talking about. How can you do Something Like that . But at the end of the day, good on you sean, taking risks and having fun, thats what life is supposed to be all about. Its funny because i agree with you. When youlook back , theres things that ive done so many televisionappearances and done things that frankly i dont want my kids to watch. And its nice to be able to say like my kids now, we now gather. I watched before i did the show and so even now as they head into season 29 on monday nights i can sit down with my kids and they can vote for someone and talk about who is thatperson , they did a good job. We need more of that, not less of it. And so it was fun on a lot of levels and it was really an enjoyable experience. In the book i talk about the fact that im on the board of a few organizations and igot to bring wounded servicemembers and their families to the show. You forget that youre out there, everybody goes to the Reagan Library, but for a lot of folks being told you can get thishollywood night out where you get to come and meet all the stars and get treated like a vip , to say you and your caregiver, its a really cool thing to be able to do so its fun to make the experience broader than myself. And it made for a great start to the book so way to go sean area that the only thing i have to say and i was surprised i didnt know this until i read your book was the one guy who seems like a nice guy, tom bergeron, hes the one guy that takes shots at you from the start. It just seemed odd. If you had picked up 30 faces at that show and said tell me the one guy thats going to pop off, im with you. I love watching this guy on tv, hes always funny and jovial and despite the fact that he popped off about me i still think hes a good host. I think this is what makes the difference between conservatives and liberals is that he may not like me, obviously i dont like his politics but i think hesgood at what he does. So its weird and i said itat the outset. Hes been a good host of the show. Hes entertaining. I just thought why of all the people that have been on the show that have done some rather nefarious things, youre coming after me . No names of course. Well put. And then around that time before or after you hit the talk show circuit, you did fallon, you did stephen colbert, that thing with the emmys and all that. It seems like it would have been a lot of fun but at the same time thats where you talk about how you know in the modern day it seems like we have comedy has taken a turn where it all seems to be personal and fighting now, its not really comedy anymore. This goes back to what i was saying about tom. I go back to the day, leno and lemberg letterman were equal opportunity offenders and it was funny. They poked fun at people. They work mean about it and the different terms weve taken is that whether its colbert or fallon or kimball or seth myers even is that weve got to be mean and we got to be political. Youve got a long history in republican politics, i was watching the other night a clip , i didnt watch the show and it was Jamie Harrison is the democratic challenger and im trying to remember, i think he was on kimball but the point is in my entire political career ive never heard of the Challenger Campaign going on a latenight show that wasnt running forpresident. Thats where it is now where weve tried to figure out how to turn these latenight shows into the political shows where they can also tell jokes, and find ways to poke fun at conservatives for the president. Used to be this place where the end of the day you could turn in and laugh andfall asleep. I dont thinktheyre funny anymore and thats a shame. It is and then you know you ripped from that to a vivid example of not just specifically comedy but its about how the media has decided to treat liberals versus conservatives and you use the famous blackface example that whether youre a liberal or a conservative, a number of people involved in that yet the pending which side of the fence youre on your treated differently area to give us an example of that. Look at megan kelly. Shes on her show asked a question about the appropriateness of blackface and the funny thing is i dont want to relitigate it but i think what i think megan was getting at is a deeper understanding of why certain things offend people of color which i frankly think is as light person is helpful because we need to understand more why certain things that we might not be knowledgeable about offend certain people because of past racial injustices. I think that broadens our understanding and our concern because we go i never understood that, ive never had to do it. I can now understand in a more personal way when it troubles you or hurt you and therefore i dont want to do it again. It makes us better people. We dont use words that might offend Somebody Just because we were brought up in a way or exposed to an environment in which we are allowed to see certain things that again depending on our economic status or where we grew up but she got knocked off her show for asking a question. She apologized etc. But then you go down the long list i lay out in the book and all these folks on the left used blackface whether elected officials on the left, and Democratic Politics for people like joy behar or kimball, all these other folks and yet theres not been because if youre on the left, excused and washed away as long as you are advancing a greater good in the leftist culture. Its okay and forgiven and you go through this with comedy, i talk about the. Saturday night live where one comic was not allowed back on because of a joke yet some of these other folks when they find homophobic or antisemitic things they said as long as they say that wasnt too i am anymore, joy from msnbc when she made up a whole host of stories about the fbi investigating packs of her thing yet shegets rewarded with a primetime show. So theres this amazing double standard that exists when the left does something and the right does something and its this more pervasive cancel culture where we figured out who gets canceled out because its not the subject , certain people can say something, other people cant and if youre in the pursuit of the leftist ideology, joy behar the other day and is unbelievably, and i use of the word attractive not in a physical sense but just as a candidate, theres an unbelievably attractive candidate in the sense that shesarticulate. She got a great plan. He has a message and shes the kind of person shes running in baltimore shes got these ads on that are just amazing. She goes on the view and joy behar tells her, a black woman that she had permission to dress in blackface from the black community. I didnt realize you could do that. Where do you go to ask for it and kim as a black woman didnt have the support of the black community and im thinking to myself in what world does an older white woman preach to a black woman and tell her that she doesnt have the support of the black community but she has a white woman does . I guess on the view its okay. No problem with that. The book is great because you play at a high level. You get down in the weeds on a lot of these issues and at the higher altitudes sean, you go after corporate activism, big tech , hollywood. I think what i tried to do is not necessarily go after, but it also is exposing because i dont think when i was researching the different subjects and i would go down the rabbit hole and say wait a minute, that cant be true is it was like you start to realize whats really going on and what motivates some of these people and it explains a lot is the way i would put it. Why would a company do this . Why would a hollywood firm not want to do this and you look at it and go its finally making sense now. So in the exposing of big institutions like that, is there one sean that is like the most pernicious. Its one that is undercutting our society more than any other . Is it the fact that big tech goes after censorship, isnt that Corporate America is just bowing to Political Correctness . Or all they are all a pox on older houses as youexpose it all . I think its a little pox on all their houses but what worries me is the chapter on education where you realize whats happening in Public Schools these days in terms of not what theyre teaching them in terms of math and science and all these things but rather this idea of what to protest, what causes to care for and theres a part in the book where i talk about the fact that many schools like in Fairfax County allows kids days off to go protest Climate Change. Alot of people will look at this and i say in the book , im not not here to take issue with the issue. What i am here to say is if youre reading the book and you say i think that Climate Change is a bad issue and ask you to questions. One, is this an appropriate use of class time at a time when were falling behind in areas like stem, can we say lets take a day off and go protest something . Some people may say its worth the day off because you learn something, the way were falling behind especially behind china, its not. The second thing i would argue is take out Climate Change for a second and assume republicans take over your school board and that becomes a prolife march, are you still comfortable with Public School teachers and your kids out to support conservative cause and i dont think many liberals would answerthe question the same way anymore. So the thing i think is fascinating is to realize whats happening when so many parents are working so hard to put their kids on the bus in the morning they assume that the teachers just teaching him, giving him or her the tools to succeed when in fact theyre coming home and saying i dont like donald trump because hes a bad man or i understand this issue is important and youre thinking to yourself why is your job , not mine as a parent to teach them values and things like that. Ill leave the teaching of the studies and the subject up to you. You leave the values and principles up to me as a parent. I couldnt agree withyou more. So let me ask you , knowing what you know about the University Experience in america, would you ever secondguess whether to send your kids to college . I mean, its still a ticket to success in society but it concerns a lot of parents now and it didnt used to. Thats a really good question because especially in the age of covid where youre saying im stroking is 70,000 check to private institution for a kid to sit at home and go on zoom when i can sit around and take Classes Online or study. So i hope that theres a fundamental transformation in how politics are looked at. I dont know that it will happen in part because of how its financed but i think it should be and i think the question youre asking is it so important because theres things kids can learn today that they dont necessarily need to go to a fouryear liberal arts school. I can tell you in retrospect in some ways i would not be where i am today and i not go to these small liberal arts colleges but didnt prepare me for thefuture . I dont think so living with folks and getting to know folks, sure of the classes that i took , no. And i mentioned in the book i had the opportunity to throw a lot of Foundation Grants to go on to College Campuses and the a College Speaker and its amazing because how many College Conservative speakers have you had on your campus . One, five, two. Its never been more than five and its usually one or two and i think to myself this is an opportunity or the kids to learn, and every time ive gone somewhere been greeted by protests and usually some kind of outrageous statements, but theres always a packed crowd of kids because thats what they should be and its almost like they the staff and the faculty are complicit in trying to push out these voices and this opportunity to learn and to hear from somebody thats not and the funny part is i dont know about you i go to, ill tune into folks on the left area i want to know what theyre saying area and it fascinates me and i think it makes me stronger as a conservative you understand why and how they construct anargument. So its almost like and i dont think im alone in that but a lot of conservatives like to do that but its like the left feels as though its a threat to hear any voice th