The Mirror

Journos Pepper Spicer With Rotten Reviews Of ‘The Briefing’

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Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
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As you might imagine, ABC’s Chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl reviewed Sean Spicer‘s new book, “The Briefing,” for the WSJ and treated it and the former White House press secretary like a punching bag.

Since relations between Spicer and the White House Press Corps were notoriously snarly, Karl sounded a bit gleeful in his critique.

“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,” he writes.

Karl notes that Spicer didn’t have good fact checkers or copy editors and lists mistakes in the book including this whale of an error:

“He recounts a reporter asking Mr. Obama a question at a White House press conference in 1999, a decade before Mr. Obama was elected,” Karl writes.

The Daily Caller‘s Derek Hunter interviewed Spicer and raised the issue of Karl’s review.

“Well, it makes me wonder whether he read it at all,” said Spicer. “Look, I think obviously the media doesn’t like it when anyone pushes back. I would include him in the group of elite media that makes decisions about what Americans see and not see. …It’s not surprising to me.”

Watch the clip here.

A BBC interviewer, Emily Maitilis, let Spicer have it with both barrels.

“You have corrupted discourse for the entire world by going along with these lies,” she told him in an on-air interview.

BuzzFeed media and politics reporter Mark di Stefano colorfully said Maitlilis “de-limbed” Spicer.

Others are also cheering for Spicer’s demise. NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen is pleased to see Spicer is getting knocked around by the media.

“Man, I wish we had more of this style of interviewing in the US,” the geeky Rosen tweeted. “The BBC does Sean Spicer, who somehow thinks we need to hear from him again. Alright, Sean, you asked for it.”

Whoever runs VICE‘s Twitter feed remarked, “The interviewer rips Sean Spicer a new one for 15 glorious minutes.”

NY Mag rightfully mocked Spicer for not mentioning that his ex-boss Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) left Congress under a cloud of awfulness after he sexted male pages. In his book, Spicer said that Foley was “fun to be around.” Hmmm….

Freelancer Maris Kreizman had another idea of what to do with Spicer’s book.

“You can review Sean Spicer’s book and get some jokes in and make a few political points, or you can simply choose not to cover it at all,” wrote Kreizman, who has written for NYT, BuzzFeed and Esquire. 

FNC’s Brit Hume was among the few to give Spicer a break.

“Whatever happened to ‘live and let live?’ he asked regarding a cancelled stop in Boston on Spicer’s  book tour because of “political climate” fears. “It was such an American attitude. Sad to see.”

But by and large, reviews from pubs and reporters who are considered lefties are giving “The Briefing” a big fat thumbs down. CNN’s anti-Trump media host Brian Stelter took a numbers shot at Spicer.

“Despite all of Sean Spicer’s TV hits, he hasn’t cracked the top 200 on Amazon,” he cracked on Twitter. “These two pro-Trump books by Fox stars are the big sellers.”