The Daily Signal - Sean Spicer on Newsmax, Election Coverage, and Trump's Possible Media Role

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

At the beginning of the Trump presidency, Sean Spicer was White House press secretary. But on election night 2020, Spicer was host of his own show, "Spicer and Co." on Newsmax TV. He joins the podcast to discuss his journey from press secretary to TV host, how he thinks the media covered the election, and how he thinks the media changed during the past four years. Plus, we discuss whether President Donald Trump could really end up running his own network, how conservative lawmakers should treat the media, and what Newsmax TV's approach is. We also cover these stories: The Trump campaign announced Wednesday that it is filing a petition for a recount in two areas in Wisconsin.  President Donald Trump fired Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency House Democrats have once again nominated Nancy Pelosi to be speaker of the House for another two years.  “The Daily Signal Podcast” is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts may be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You also can leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail].   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is The Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, November 19th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. Today, our colleague and editor of the Daily Signal, Kate Trinko, speaks with Sean Spicer, former White House Press Secretary on the 2020 election, his perspective of the media's coverage of the election, and much more. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now, onto our top news.

The Trump campaign announced Wednesday that it is filing a petition for a recount in two areas in Wisconsin, of which the campaign is paying $3 million to the state to cover for the recounts. In this statement, the Trump campaign said the petition is for a recount in two Wisconsin counties, Milwaukee and Dane, citing illegally altered absentee ballots, illegally issued absentee ballots, and illegal advice given by government officials allowing Wisconsin's voter ID laws to be circumvented. Per the Trump campaign, municipal clerks across Wisconsin issued absentee ballots to voters without requiring an application in direct conflict with Wisconsin's absentee voting safeguards. Wisconsin law expressly requires that absentee ballots may not be issued without receiving a written application requesting the ballot. Despite this clear mandatory requirement, clerks uniformly issued absentee ballots without collecting a written application from persons who requested absentee.

ballots in person during the two-week in-person absentee voting period that ran from October 20th, 2020 through November 1st, 2020. Voter identification is an essential requirement in Wisconsin and elsewhere to ensure that only eligible voters may cast their ballots and clear abuse of Wisconsin's provision to issue ballots to indefinitely confined voters without requiring them to present voter identification. Some Democrat County clerks illegally advised voters to illegally mischaracterize, that they were indefinitely confined to circumvent Wisconsin voter ID laws. Those claiming to be indefinitely confined rose from 72,000 in 2019 to more than 240,000 at the same time of the November 3rd 2020 election.

A substantial number of those claiming that status were sent in the return ballots without proper identification and without otherwise meeting the requirements for that status. President Trump fired Christopher Krebs, Director of the Solution. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Tuesday. The president ousted the director for claims Craves has made regarding the accuracy of the presidential election. In a joint statement posted on the Infrastructure Security Agency website last week, election stakeholders said the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. And they added, there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes,

changed votes or was in any way compromised. The president has maintained that there was widespread voter fraud writing on Twitter Tuesday evening, the recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate in that there was massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines, which change votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, affected immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. Krebs tweeted later, honor to serve, we did it right, defend today, secure tomorrow,

hashtag protect 2020. House Democrats have once again nominated Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House for another two years. Pelosi's colleagues affirmed her selection by voice vote, which, per the Hill, marks a stark contrast to the secret election of two years ago when 32 Democrats had opposed Pelosi and then a rebellion from a group of resistive moderates ready for a changing of the guard after nearly two decades under Pelosi's reign. Coronavirus deaths in America reached 250,000 on Wednesday, according to NBC News, COVID death count. The New York Times was reporting 248,000 deaths as of Wednesday afternoon. Kelly Drenner, a public health expert at the University

of Houston, said per the hill, people are letting their guard down, expanding their bubbles. As cases continue to rise, both Pfizer and Moderna have announced promising vaccine results and say they are close to having a vaccine, be ready for the public. Now stay tuned for Kate Trinko's conversation with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer as they discuss the media's coverage of the 2020 election. It's because of support from listeners like you that we can continue to produce podcasts like Heritage Explains and SCOTUS 101.

And you can help us keep it up by going to www.org.org slash podcast today to make your tax deductible gift. Joining us today on the Daily Signal podcast is Sean Spicer, host of Spicer in company on Newsmax TV, and of course he's also the former Trump White House Press Secretary. Sean, thanks for joining us today. Good to see you, Kate. Thanks for having me.

All right, so I want to discuss your show. But first off, let's talk about Newsmax. Newsmax has seen huge ratings growth in recent weeks, but the network's actually been around for several years. So tell us about it. What's its editorial vision? What sets it apart from other networks? Yeah, I'll do my best here.

Chris Ruddy is obviously the one who knows the inside now. but Chris started the channel a while back, but it largely had a lot of simulcasting of radio shows and whatever. And then Chris really started to dig into a lot more of the original programming starting earlier this year. He put Greg Kelly, 7 o'clock myself and got a lot of other great folks that kind of got moved around. And we've now got original programming starting at 7 a.m. going all the way through. I think it's 9 o'clock at night now with Grant Stinchfield. I'm on every day at 6. I mean, I think that the goal is, you know, I think we are admittedly right at center.

I think there's a couple things that are different. Our news programming during the day is pretty straightforward. We tell you what's going on. The big difference, I think, is that the overarching philosophy is to bring on smart people, let them tell you what's going on, and let viewers make up their mind. The beauty of my show is that I've said all along, we're on every night at 6 o'clock. I'm not a journalist. I don't want to play one.

I don't intend to be one. What I want to do is talk about somebody who is, bring on guests that are really insightful, and then have a conversation with them as someone who's been in the arena. I've spent 21 years in the military, 25 years in campaign, six years of the R&C, eight months as the president's press in the White House on his campaign. I can actually have a conversation with someone about here's what's actually happening in the campaign at that kind of moment. Here's what a member of Congress is thinking.

Here's how the decision-making process works in these various, facets of either government or a campaign. And I'm not afraid to tell the guest, okay, well, here's my opinion, and that's the beauty of it, but it's a conversation. And we're not trying to tell the viewers what to think. We're bringing on smart people, letting them hear that discussion and, you know, and then go back from this. Every show's got a little bit of a different flavor to it.

Greg and Grant are after me, and they are very opinionated with what they think. They bring on great guests. but we're not trying to hide it. We're, you know, unlike some of these other outlets that try to pretend that they're all into this journalism thing and yet have a very left-wing bias. We're open about where we stand. Our daytime guys are obviously very much, here's the news. And at the night, we kind of give you our takes on stuff. And I think the beauty of what's been happening is starting, you know, mid-summer, we really just saw a nice, steady,

increased every week, people coming over. But when the election happened, it was an election night. We were there till two in the morning on the decision desk. And the thing was great is that, and I think what where people started to really tune in in the newsmax is they were listening to myself, Mark Alper and Heather Nauer, so many other folks, Joe Pinyons, sitting around the table, just sort of telling people where things stood in a state. Okay, this is how much is in. This is what he used to get in this. This is what he's getting now. This is blah, blah, blah. But it was just, we weren't trying to tell you the outcome of the election. We're giving you insight into, hey, this county is going to be important. Here's what it was last time. And I think what people appreciated

on election night was we weren't trying to call the race and tell you who we project to be the winner, which I don't really think is the role of journalists. We were telling you, you know, doing analysis. Here's where we think, you know, this county is going to be important or this is how much is still left out on this or so-and-so is overperforming in this area. And it went gangbusters since then people have really tuned in because I think that they appreciate the fact that Newsmax isn't here to tell you what to think, we're just to give you as much information as possible to make up a decision for yourself and be better informed. So for those of our readers or listeners who are interested in Newsmax, is it a cable station? Is it on YouTube? What's the best way to

access it? That's a great question, Kate, because the answer is D all of the above. The thing that really makes Newsmax unique is that we're in 70 million homes. So if you have cable, you know, Xfinity files, Cox, Spectrum, or you have, you know, dish or direct, we're on everything. So we're on all those stations. If you go to Newsmax.com, there's a little cable finder and you can figure out your channel. But even better, if you go to YouTube, you can stream it live. If you go to NewsmaxTV.com, you can watch it live from your smartphone if you don't have the YouTube app. We're on all the OTT stuff like Pluto and Roku.

So you can basically watch us wherever you are, however you want to. If you're in the car driving down the highway and you just want to put it on your smartphone or you have a YouTube app and you want to watch it from your smart TV and you're a cord cutter, then you can do that. But it's unique because there's no other station that has that ability. You have to have a cable subscription if you want to watch one of the other premium news stations. And I think that people appreciate that because it's, you know, some people are total cord cutters and and so they want to watch you know via YouTube I have a TV here in my office and that's

what I I mean I don't have a there's no cord I just put it on YouTube and connect to the internet and watch it but I can go home then and then put it on you know I have direct TV at home so I go to channel 349 and watch it at home on on direct TV but it's the beauty of newsmatch right now is that no matter where you are you can watch it that's awesome as a cord cutter really that. So you have a very unique perspective, I would say, on the past four years. You started out as the White House Press Secretary, you know, election night you're working for Newsmax. What do you think of the media's coverage and its evolution over President Trump's term the past four years? It's a fascinating question because for me, I've been able to kind of look at things now with different lenses, but being there, then kind of outside for a while, doing a lot of commentary. And now is Sony who gets to a lot of, sit in a host role. So I would answer the question by this. I think it's gotten much more personal, meaning that you see all these folks. And I think much more personal, but also very bad.

I think you watch these folks talk about their personal bias a lot more, expose their personal bias a lot more. They pretend that they're neutral. When I read a story, there's days where I wonder, did they understand how biased they are when they write it in the way that they have? They are largely wrong on a lot of things in terms of how they present them. For example, the New York Times, the other day had a story that says Biden has accumulated 270 electoral votes. That's not true. The electoral college hasn't met.

It means December 14. And so for all these folks who like to virtue signal and talk about truth and facts first and all this stuff. They mislead their voters. They can say he is likely to get that or he's presumed or he's on his way or when the electoral college meets. But they cheapen our system of government when they tell the American people about how things are that are not accurate. And so I think it's gotten much worse and much more bias. And the thing that's interesting to me is I don't know that they care. I joke for a while that Biden was getting softballs and then I had to edit it and say that he's getting beach balls because the one time that they had a chance to ask him a question during the campaign

he'd been absent for a while they ask them you know what flavor ice cream did you get today i mean and i'm not kidding that was the question that they asked um the amount the the the kid gloves by which they handled them is is embarrassing to journalism so i was struck by how you said it's gotten more personal because at the daily signal we try to keep the focus on policies not people you know not make it inordinately personal in a way that's inappropriate, but we've seen, you know, so many very intense personal attacks on Trump, on other conservatives. Could you elaborate a bit more on what you meant about that? Yeah, so I covered this on my show yesterday. There was a story in the Washington Post that talked about, you know, it may not be the case that Melania Trump divorces

the president right after they leave. Some people actually think that they like each other. It, it was appalling to me to think that a news outlet is covering someone's marriage, regardless of who it is, and speculating about whether or not they're really going to be leaving or not, because the truth is that we've all been talking about them, you know, this faux marriage that they have and how they're getting divorced. And I'm like, no, we haven't. You know, I mean, it was, and the idea that any of the reporters, I think there are three of them on the byline, have any clue or insight into their relationship. I will tell you this on a personal level, I've had the opportunity to be near them several times during my tenure,

both in the campaign, during the White House stand and afterwards. My impression is they're, you know, an amazing kind of combination and the president values and respects the first lady's input on stuff. She is unbelievable with her counsel to him. And so I'm sitting here reading an article like that thinking of myself, how, like who else would write a story? speculating on the status of somebody's marriage, number one. But number two, coming at it from the angle of, we've all assumed they're getting divorced, but, you know, the reality is maybe they will stay together.

It's so highly inappropriate. And yet, nobody would, it didn't even cause anybody to kind of go, wow, that really is a bad. It was a, oh, yeah, that's a good story in the Washington Post. Share it. And I'm thinking, if you wrote this story about Pelosi and her husband, There would be outrage. Right, and I would say there should be outrage.

I mean, I think too often people forget, these are real people. These are not characters in a telenova or whatever. They're also, yes, they are real people. They breathe. But the other thing that's interesting to me is that it's not like these reporters have a clue. They don't know who they are.

I mean, they haven't spent any time with them. I mean, you know, it's like they're writing it because they talk to four sources who, you know, say that, you know, that they talk to somebody who knows someone who was on a Zoom with them that thinks the following. I mean, I just, it's so, it just, it literally drove me up a wall to read that yesterday. So you mentioned about the New York Times and the electoral college votes. And more broadly, what do you think of the media's coverage of the election and the aftermath? You know, similar to you at Daily Signal, we're saying, let's let the litigation play out. Let's let the recap.

counts play out. But the media is by and large has taken a different approach. Yeah, I mean, they've decided the outcome of stuff. I mean, look, you can analyze somebody's legal briefs or whatever or talk about their chances, right, that they may or may not do stuff. And in politics, we always talk about these things. Well, no one who's ever been in third place in the second Monday in February has won the New Hampshire primary. It's like, who cares? I mean, you know, it's like there's such speculation about what's really going to happen. My view is, is that let the process play out. I've just, they have been, it's amazing to me when you read publications like Politico or listen to people like Chuck Todd, how spectacularly wrong they are about so many things that

they claim to be professionals in and yet never have to answer for the mistakes in the wrongness. So they talk about this big blue wave that's going to come crashing down. Republicans pick up seats in the House of Representatives that was supposed to wash them away. Political had a big thing on there. Kevin McCarthy's, you know, hold on the conference will get smaller because it'll be less Republicans. There's now more. He's actually, you know, within possibly, you know, a handful of just or or greater of taking over the House. The Senate, barring some catastrophe in Georgia will remain in Republican hands. The president got more votes than he ever did before. He grew his vote among blacks, Hispanics,

Jewish Americans who they thought it was going to be worse. So they're spectacularly wrong and yet there's no consequence for it. And it's amazing to me that there's never any consequence for it. There's no like scorecard.

It's not like at the end of the season the reporter has a batting average. You go, wow, you are horrible. You never hit a ball. Oh my gosh, I love that idea of batting averages for political reporters. That would be phenomenal. But they always,

The other thing, Kate, is they always couch stuff in. It's very possible that the following happens. And then they go, well, we only said it was possible. So they always like to use Weasel words to make sure that there's never any sense of full accountability. Right. I mean, it's literally like waking up right now and saying like it's either it could be sunny or raining tomorrow. It's like you want, but it also could be cloudy. And then tomorrow, I mean, what's the point in making a prediction if you're going to give yourself cover on every basis?

And I go, see, I was right. It was rainy or cloudy or, you know, that takes away any sense of professionalism. So to PIPP it a little bit, I saw on your show recently, you covered the big tech hearings in the Senate. And among conservative media, you know, there's increasing concern about these tech companies censoring content. You know, as conservatives, we think private companies can make their own decisions. But we're also grappling with it. I mean, Daily Signal had a YouTube video pull. down, a doctor talking about gender dysphoria because they didn't like one sentence,

she said. So how do you think conservative media should approach the tech companies? Gingerly. I think that, like, here's the difference, because I'm with you, as a conservative, I'm not a big fan of government regulation, but I think the difference with what's going on is that Twitter and Facebook have been given government protection. They have, they're covered by Section 230 of the Federal Decency Act, which, you know, gives them more protection than it does the Washington Post. The Washington Post maligns you. You can sue them. Well, Twitter and Facebook claim that they're just platforms. They're not publishers, which is not true. So I think that conservatives need to hold them accountable in the sense that it's like they shouldn't have the

protections that they do, full stop, because you can sue the Washington Post if they say anything. And what Twitter and Facebook in particular want is to have it both ways. They want to say, say that they're platforms and therefore they're not publishers, they're not editors, but then they do what they do to you guys and they do to others, which is they label something on a video that's an opposing view. And it's weird. Like I'm sitting here during COVID, watch doctors talk about things, right? And they're saying, I've seen the following. Well, if a doctor doesn't say what the conventional wisdom is, then somehow it's not right. And if you think of about the evolution of what the medical community has told us over the course of COVID, it has

changed. It has evolved. So would they have flagged a video at the beginning while the science said don't wear a mask? If somebody was out there saying the best thing you should do is wear a mask, at that point they probably would have flagged it and said, well, science doesn't prove this. Now they're saying wear a mask. And then when they did say it, the initial thing was, well, it's just to protect other people, not you. Right? Now they're saying, potentially does vote. But the point is, is that it's evolved. It's a novel virus. I'm not here to, you know, get into that piece. But I think that the point is, is that who are they to decide? I saw a video flag yesterday that said, according to the Post, the Washington Post in the New York

Times, and I thought to myself, I don't understand who made them experts? Like, so that because of stories published in the Washington Post, that's some kind of expertise, no way. I didn't agree more. So on another note, some reports have said, President Trump is interested in potentially starting his own TV show or maybe even his own network if he isn't reelected. Could you see the president doing that and what do you think he'd be like? Sure I could. You know, he's got a huge audience and they're very loyal to him. I think Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, I said before we'd love to see him more as a guest on Newsmax, but he'll do whatever he wants to do. I do think, though, it's, the president is someone who I don't think

likes to be pigeonholed by one thing. You know, he, he, he, he, he likes to go out there and be on all the different channels and, and, and so I think confining himself to one channel would be difficult. So I don't know, but, and I also don't know, I mean, you know, you know, there's a lot of opportunities for him now, um, to, to, you know, do stuff online. but I think he really loves the broadcast piece of this. So, you know, he's got a lot of opportunities no matter what or when. So we'll see. But, you know, there's not going to be any lack of desire to get him on.

So one question I have that you might be able to address is obviously President Trump has been very openly spoken during his time in office. But we do know that occasionally he still goes off the record and, you know, runs things by his advisors. Do you think you could see him speaking even more openly out of office? I don't know what more openly, how he could be more open. I think between what he says and what he tweets, he's extremely open. Okay. Didn't know if he was holding some things back. Oh, no. No, no, no. I mean, I think if you read some of those tweets, he's, he is direct. There's no kidding around. All right. So you, you know, as we talked about, have been a press secretary, the RNC, the White House, etc. I think sometimes working in conservative media, as you

are now, you sometimes get frustrated because it feels like conservative lawmakers rail against the media, but then give all their best scoots to the same traditional media. So I wanted to ask you, do you think there's room for growth among conservative lawmakers and how should they approach the media? Is there room for their communication strategy to evolve in how they treat the media conservative and traditional? Look, I find it very frustrating myself. I spend six years at the R&C and I think we tried to bring a seat, bring conservative media wherever we went, give a seat at that. But it blows my mind to consistently watch folks, you know, preach about the bias and then say, okay, well, I'm going over and doing these three interviews on MSNBC.

It's like they don't like you. They never will like you. You're only giving them credibility. I would like to see a world where conservative lawmakers pledged at least 50% of their time media interviews to conservative outlets. I think that there's no reason of conservative. If you are truly conservative, number one, this is the world that we live in today. This is where a lot of these folks are coming, whether it's Newsmax or the Daily Signal or what have you. But number two is I think that there's a commitment as conservatives that we should have to help each other out.

So, you know, you've got the Daily Signal and Breitbart and Daily Caller. Like my view is the more the better, you know, we should have, you know, and we should be supportive of it. each other because my personal view is the left fears the right. There's a reason that they cancel people out. There's a reason they run people on college campuses. There are reasons that, you know, Hollywood won't do in green light certain projects is because they fear the policies of the right. They know that they are better and they just don't want them. And they will overlook their own self-interest. I wrote all about this in my book, Leading America, that they will overlook their self-interest, whether it's audience side or profit,

because they don't want the right to have a voice. And so the more that there is opportunities for conservative media to present those policies to folks, the better. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Sean. Again, I should note, the show is Spicer & Company, and you can check it out on Newsmax TV. Every night, 6 o'clock. And that'll do it for today's episode.

Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave with your review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.