Sean Spicer has claimed that working as President Donald Trump’s press secretary was so stressful that he turned to God to get him through it.
Spicer said he used his Catholic faith to ‘sustain’ him through the brutally long hours and relentless criticism of his time in the White House.
In an interview in New York on Friday, Spicer said that on top of daily abuse from his boss he was followed everywhere he went and stopped taking Ubers because the drivers always recognized him.
He said that was ambushed at an Apple store and could not do his work as a Navy reserve because he was being harassed by reporters.
Summing up his intense seven months in the West Wing, Spicer said: ‘You were truly in a whole new world…no matter what I did it was going to become a meme.’
Sean Spicer said that he used his Catholic faith to ‘sustain’ him through the brutally long hours and relentless criticism of his time as the White House Press Secretary
Spicer was ridiculed by critics on social media and was played by comedian Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live who mocked his anger and constant gum chewing
Spicer was Trump’s first press secretary and from his first White House press briefing he became a star in his own right thanks to his combative, feisty style.
It fell to Spicer to defend the size of Trump’s crowd size and the President’s early policies like the ban on refugees from Muslim majority countries,
But immediately he was mercilessly ridiculed by critics on social media and was played by comedian Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live who mocked his anger and constant gum chewing.
Appearing at BookExpo America, a major book industry conference in New York, Spicer said that until Trump’s election victory he had spent his career until then doing communications for the Republican party.
One of the few times he got recognized was at men’s clothing retailer Joseph A. Bank when a man in the sweater section said he noticed him.
In his new job, however, everything changed.
Spicer said: ‘For me the intensity and scrutiny, that no matter what I did it was going to become a meme.
‘The hardest part is that as a human being when someone says something about you you want to push back say that’s not true. But my job was to just suck it up.
‘I used to chew a lot of gum, in case you hadn’t seen the Melissa McCarthy stuff. Who cares?
Spicer was Trump’s first press secretary and from his first White House press briefing he became a star in his own right thanks to his combative, feisty style
‘Some people drink coffee, I chew a lot of cinnamon gum and suddenly you wake up and there’s memes about you on Twitter. The smallest little thing on every single thing I did became an issue’.
Spicer said that former White House press secretary Josh Earnest warned him he would not be able to take an Uber car any more after he got the job.
Spicer did not believe him but in the first car he took after his first press briefing the driver recognized him immediately – and demanded a good tip.
One Saturday Spicer tried to go to the Apple store to buy his wife a watch as a surprise, but he was filmed and the footage was posted online.
The president saw it and ended up calling him to ask why he was at the Apple store, Spicer said.
Spicer was speaking to promote his forthcoming memoir called ‘The Briefing’, which is due out next month
Spicer said that under such intense scrutiny he turned to his family and faith to get through it all.
He said: ‘If you believe that God has a plan this is part of it, some days are going to be better than others’.
Spicer said that after praying he found himself asking: ‘Could I have done that better, were you the best person you could be today?’
He said: ‘There’s a reason we call it Catholic guilt; are you reflecting on it, saying can you be better.’
Spicer was speaking to promote his forthcoming memoir called ‘The Briefing’, which is due out next month.
He said that writing the book was ‘very cathartic’ and that he had ‘saved a lot of therapy bills’ by putting his account of things down.
If one of his daughters ever wanted to follow in his footsteps, Spicer half joked that ‘I’d probably start showing her a lot of Tweets and say this is what happened to Daddy’.
Asked who is favorite Democrat was, Spicer said that it was Nancy Pelosi, the Senate Minority Leader, as she was the ‘greatest fundraising tool’.
Spicer said that the rancor on Capitol Hill had ‘gotten out of control on both sides’.
With no reference to Trump, who routinely insults people on Twitter, he said that ‘the idea you can say certain things about people is insane, and I’m not blameless’.