{UAH} Life after Trump: From Spicer to Omarosa, what people are up to since exiting White House inner circle
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Life after Trump: From Spicer to Omarosa, what people are up to since exiting White House inner circle
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After Trump's White House
Sean Spicer, Donald Trump's former White House spokesman, has finally found a new gig — a special correspondent for the celebrity-obsessed television show Extra.
The 47-year-old has been revisiting his Washington haunts for what are being billed as a series of exclusive interviews with "Trump's biggest power-players."
The brief segments debuted on Wednesday with a behind-the-curtain look at U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his wife Susan and their dog Sherman.
The revelations were in keeping with the syndicated program's gossipy tone — the pair miss Kansas, love the Oscars, and America's top diplomat has a playlist filled with AC/DC, Queen and Toby Keith.
Last night, it was Kellyanne Conway's turn.
"What do the kids think of having a famous mom?" Spicer probed.
And this evening, current White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders and her husband Bryan will have their softball session.
Serving as a presidential spokesman has traditionally been a golden ticket in the United States.
George Stephanopoulos parlayed his experience handling the press and advising Bill Clinton into a career with ABC News, where he now hosts both This Week and Good Morning America, and serves as the network's chief anchor, at a reported salary of $15 million US to $17 million a year.
Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush's press secretary, now runs his own communications firm that offers training, advice and plots media strategy for clients that include the NFL, NBA, Pfizer and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
And the trio who served over Barack Obama's two terms — Robert Gibbs, Jay Carney, and Josh Earnest — are now, respectively, senior executives with McDonald's, Amazon and United Airlines.
But Spicer, who worked on Trump's campaign and then served six tumultuous months at the White House — during which his was mercilessly lampooned by Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live — has had a rockier transition.
His sunny retelling of his time with Trump, The Briefing: Politics, the Press, and the President, was savaged by critics and his launch events drew protestors.
The memoir did briefly make it onto the New York Times and Wall St. Journal best-seller lists, but quickly lost momentum. It currently ranks as the 130,757th best-selling book on Amazon.com, although it is number 261 with a bullet in the Russian and Former Soviet Union sub-category.
(Spicer is flogging personalized and autographed copies of the book on his website for just a couple of dollars more than its $28.99 list price.)
He had a political podcast with a Fox News contributor, Katie Pavlich, but the last new episode was posted in December.
And a talk show proposal, Sean Spicer's Common Ground, which would see him interview famous people in informal settings, has been floating around Hollywood since last summer, but has yet to catch on.
Other Trump veterans haven't had the same struggle.
Josh Raffel, who served as deputy communications director, is now the vice-president of corporate communications for Juul, a much-hyped e-cigarette maker.
Hope Hicks, who channeled Trump during the campaign and then advised him in Washington, is now the head of PR for Fox, solidifying the lend-lease arrangement between Rupert Murdoch's empire and the White House.
Although Spicer is arguably doing better than Omarosa Manigault Newman, whose career arc has taken her from The Apprentice to the Oval Office and now back to reality television, most recently as a guest host on Celebrity Big Brother 2.
Spicer has expressed hopes that his open-ended arrangement with Extra will help spark interest in his talk show pitch.
The early returns aren't all that promising, however.
As of early afternoon on Friday, Spicer's interviews with Pompeo and Conway had a combined viewership of just over 3,000 people on Extra's YouTube channel.
"If I'm right, and I'm pretty sure I am," writes Dr. Epstein, Trump is capable of only a minimal level of analytical or critical thinking." (Photo: DonkeyHotey/flickr/cc)
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