After just five days, what did this say? What does this whole fiasco say about White House fitting and whether Donald Trump chooses people who look pretty and just agree with him instead of people who are competent at the job?

Well, look, in Katie's defense, I've known her for a while.

She's come on my show from time to time.

She's a smart individual.

She's no question about it.

She is smart.

She does a great job of fighting for the America First agenda.

Sean, what on earth is going on?

interesting well so give us your insight and again not she's a one thing anyone in this town especially people who work in right of center media will say about katie she is a wonderful person she is a very smart person and she's very good do you think though maybe this wasn't the right job for her

So again, yeah, I just, I say she's very smart and she's a very, very kind person.

And she just is no matter who she interacts with, the one thing you'll find everybody to a T says she's just a very pleasant, kind individual to deal with.

But look, there are certain strengths and weaknesses we all have.

And I think understanding one of the things that people sort of miss about the job of press secretary that I try to explain is 20% of it's the briefing or forward facing the rest of it's behind the scenes.

It's working with agencies and departments and outside stakeholders, Congress crafting a message, rollouts, things like that.

And I think that sometimes people mistake that, well, I've done a lot of interviews or I'm good on television and that's great, but you need to make sure that you understand how the process works.

What do you think?

How does a press secretary juggle coming in really in the middle of the final weeks of a major, major election and at the same time deal with all the government stuff that never goes away?

I mean, look, I don't know that there's ever a good time, right? I mean, if you're at the beginning, you've got challenges.

If you're midpoint, whether it's before or right after an election, you're dealing with something.

I mean, the key is to surround yourself with a good team.

She's got a good team there in the press office, the Carolina Assembly that she's inheriting.

And then the second is to really start to hug the senior people, right? So you've got to find key people on the National Security Council who have the key issues in their wheelhouse.

So who's the senior director that handles, you know, Eastern Europe? Who is the senior director that handles the Indo-PACOM area? Who at the congressional, the legislative affairs shop is your go-to to make sure that you know what's going on the Hill? You got to have somebody in the White House counsel's office that's talking to you about, you know, everything from cases that they're defending to things that they're promoting.

What is the Democrats got to do to have a big day on election day? What are the Republicans got to do and how are they doing in hitting those marks?

Uh, what do you think he'll ultimately decide?

Well, even the vice president said, "If they live-stream it, I won't watch it." That's, that sort of starts to give you a tell where the administration is.

I, as I said, I'm not really sure what the greater good is.

I, I think everybody knows you're gonna execute the guy.

They know that you'll have done it.

Uh, I, I just don't know that showing it does any good, and it probably inspires some others and gives them some credence in the future when they say, "Well, look at what the US did.

Uh, we now are going to do some unspeakable act and, a- and justify it using what we did here." Although this, this individual obviously went through the justice system here, and there's no question about his level of guilt or the degree of, of a heinous act that he committed.

Your view?

Mm-hmm.

Um, but what that means is that your ground game is critical.

Sununu's got a huge brand, obviously.

He was a former senator, former house member.

His brother, Chris, was a m- four-term governor, very popular.

His dad was a popular governor.

The Sununu family, his brothers, have been involved in the executive council in New Hampshire.

What are the real data points instead of public polls that you look at?

Right

...

MSNBC.

I, I've been a, a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party.

I mean, very consistent defender.

But there's no defending this, because it's immoral.

I'm voting for a reckoning against the GOP.

Yeah.

Mm.

Isolate them.

I did that for weeks on end, and it was funny because I did it to both ABC, a grifter personality by the name of Jon Karl, and then Jim Acosta, who's, like, his brother at CNN.

And I just iced them, and I stopped at letting them ask question.

And Jonathan Karl literally basically verbally assaulted me and said, "You are undermining my ability to do my job." Like I had some obligation to a- allow him to ask a question.

I said, "You have a right to sit there according to the law.

I don't...

Do you believe that there will be a new White House press secretary after the midterms and, and we'll get back to kind of a normal, a more normal press briefing situation?

Mm.

Isolate them.

I did that for weeks on end, and it was funny because I did it to both ABC, a grifter personality by the name of Jon Karl, and then Jim Acosta, who's like his brother at CNN.

And I just iced them, and I stopped at letting them ask question.

And Jonathan Karl literally basically verbally assaulted me and said, "You are undermining my ability to do my job." Like I had some obligation to a- allow him to ask a question.

I said, "You have a right to sit there according to the law.

I don't...

Do you believe that there will be a new White House press secretary after the midterms and, and we'll get back to kind of a normal, a more normal press briefing situation?

W- w- w- what are the stakes here?

Well, the stakes are enormous.

I mean, look, it's w- the House I still think we could hold onto.

It's becoming harder and harder.

The Senate is clearly, we have a three-seat majority.

The Dems actually need four seats 'cause JD Vance, the vice president, would break that tie.

Uh, it's definitely a tough landscape, although it's interesting dynamic here.

Uh, why do you think, though, it is so tight? Why is Donald Trump struggling? Why are his poll numbers, uh, low?

Sean, the president cannot be happy looking at these numbers.

No, obviously not great numbers, but remember, the president, this, this election's in battleground states and battleground districts.

Two of those states had great announcements.

Iowa, $15 billion announcing a new steel mo- mill-

Mm-hmm

... that will help not just in the long term but short-term construction jobs.

Uh, that's not only a great news for Ashley Hinson, who's the Republican nominee running for Senate, but it's in the district represented by Marion Miller-Meeks, who's had really close elections the last two cycles.

And then an LNG pipeline in Alaska, where Dan Sullivan's facing a very, very tough re-election race.

You gotta be thinking as, as you see Carolyn love it up there going, Hey, I, I

didn't have it this easy.

Well, you know, it's funny when you say that I had a conversation with the president a couple of weeks back and, um, He was asking, he said, you know, this is just how he operates.

He always says, how do you think it's going? How's everyone doing? And I said to him, sir, I'm a little jealous.

He started laughing and he said, why do you say that? I said, because, you know, we came and he was very magnanimous.

He said, oh, that's nice.

And then I said, well, it's true.

And I think that, I'd be curious to know your thoughts, but I think that has helped him a lot as well.

What's going on here?

Well, James, I mean, look, you noted it.

They're monitoring very stringently.

It's very stringent.

So, I mean, if they want to blow something else up, there's a good chance, a decent chance they'll know about it.

So, you know, rest assured that it's very stringent.

Here's the thing that I don't understand.

Is that a fair assessment?

Is Donald Trump right to be so dismissive of the experts? What does he know that they don't?

I think what he knows, James, is kind of what President Xi put out just a moment ago.

They're not going to stop anything.

The question comes down to, are we in America going to allow China to advance AI unfettered while we pause for a moment? So I think he's got a point there.

However, I will say, to the first truth post that you put up, He's absolutely right.

And the way I look at this is when business leaders who are potentially going to make a boatload of money saying we need the government to help us, it's a clarion call for help.

And so I am not a big believer in government intervention, but I do believe that when industry leaders tell you that they're crying for help and they'd like something, you can't just dismiss them.

Is Trump simply calculating that, OK, AI may be a great risk, but in Trump's view, the risk of China with AI is an even greater risk?

Earlier today, I spoke with former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and asked him why, 25 years after 9-11, so much of the American media coverage is focused on Muslims fearing a backlash rather than on the Americans who were murdered

by Islamic terrorists.

I think it's another indictment on the American media, once again, trying to make a victim out of the people, or not the victim, a victim out of those folks, instead of, as you rightly point out, the true victims of this, the families that are still without loved ones who deal with the health consequences, who deal with the memories of their loved one being gone.

the financial consequences of it in so many cases.

You don't have to look far.

I sit here now about a mile from the Pentagon where that third plane struck that you mentioned.

I remember exactly where I was on 9-11.

In fact, the New York Post says a number of young people in America, many of this current generation, know very little about what actually happened on 9-11.

Is she laying the groundwork for a 2028 run?

All good questions.

Let me just start with the beginning.

I will give her credit.

She has done very well reaching out to young people with authentic videos of herself just talking and mumbling about crazy, woke leftist stuff.

But this to me was, I mean, it's clearly staged.

And I don't know why.

What's your information on this?

Sean, I suspect she personifies how a lot of Americans feel about Abdul.

I mean, honest to God, if you asked AI to give me a hostage video, that's what it would come back with.

That's literally unbelievable.

But here's the scary part, James.

Right now, he's leading.

And I try to remind people every day of this.

I live in Virginia.

When the White House press ask these sort of questions, do they actually care about the answer or are they just trying to generate a headline?

So how has the party changed from the party you recognized in your 20s to now? I mean, I know how I think it's changed, but I'm interested, having seen it from the inside.

So the interesting thing is, obviously, the easy answer is it's become much more populist.

I would argue that since I started to now, what's happened is that the leaders of the party forgot – where the base was.

Because the thing that was interesting is that I would segue between Capitol Hill, like a job on Capitol Hill, and then go out on the campaign trail.

It was just always interesting to me the sort of dichotomy that existed between what the leaders were proposing and fighting for and what you would hear on the ground.

And I think that what Trump did to the party was finally align the leadership with where the grassroots were on issues like trade and foreign policy, where It just – I think for a lot of people and I was having this conversation with another group yesterday afternoon where one of the things that people mistake – like they focus on Trump's tactics and his tone as opposed to the outcome.

And the reason I say that is that like the best example I can get is that we were having this conversation about trade.

As we just close out, is there anything that gives you hope about our future?

Can the Democrats win elections in the U.S. by moving so far to the left, or is that a recipe for alienating mainstream Americans? So I want you to

understand something that it took me a while to get to.

I was of the mindset last year, I live in Virginia, I vote in Virginia.

We had a candidate running for attorney general, which is our top law enforcement official, who had said in a a voicemail and text that came out that he wanted to kill his political opponent and then murder his children.

Voters still elected that guy to be the top law enforcement.

And it took me a while to digest this, which is people are so sick and tired of the system right now.

that they will vote for anybody who just says, I'm going to shake things up, regardless of how nuts they are and what crazy things they say.

I'm curious to know, is the media applying the same scrutiny to the ideological transformation now happening inside the Democrat Party?

And I'm not saying that's the case in North Carolina or Georgia or whatever, but this seems intentional.

Well, I'm gonna burst your bubble, because I get your thinking, but Donald Trump controls everything.

I mean, the MAGA Inc. super PACs, he said it the other day, "These are mine.

I control them." The RNC, the RNC is, is, uh, uh...

The, the head of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel, was installed by Donald Trump.

This is his party.

He owns all of the levers.

How bad is November gonna be?

Tell me why it's not actually going as bad as it looks.

Well, look, I would like to see this thing, and for a variety of reasons, sooner rather than later.

In fact, I mean, on a political front, this is not something that we want to spend the final 80 days talking about, number one.

Number two, from an economic front, I don't think that this is helping.

Number three, on the national security threat, which is why we went in, I have been a big proponent, I think you and I have talked about this, that I think we need to go in and finish the job.

Now, I do think the economic pain that Iran is feeling is very, very real.

But we need to show not just Iran, but the rest of the world that our military might will follow up when we have a mission.

Did you actually enjoy the job?

Does he really think it's reopened and this is all sort of a media thing?

So I, I, I think it's a, a very good question, an interesting one.

And, and what I have learned over the last several months, 'cause like you, when I hear something like this, I, I have a lot of folks that I know in the industry and in the world and, uh, Navy buddies.

And so, so what I've kind of determined is that at any given time a few things can be true at the same time.

So in the strait there's two channels.

There's a southern one and a northern one, and there are times when the northern one, uh, i- is, which is more towards Oman, less controlled by, uh, the Iranians, may be open.

The bottom one, which is what the Iranians want people to go down through, where they want to guarantee a safe passage for, for one point of toll, uh, can be disrupted.

That to me indicates that he's sort of, "Um, I'm not gonna take an off-ramp necessarily." [laughs]

But linking this to autism, I mean, who still believes in that link?

Well, there's two things that I think the president announced today that are important.

One, and I got to be honest with you, I don't know about Australia's vaccine schedule, but when you look at a lot of other countries, they don't jam them all in kids at once, which is what they're doing here in the United States.

Our schedule is much more expansive than it is in many places.

Number two, the timing of it early and all at once is, again, not something that you see.

And then third, though, just in terms of your question, look, I work for a boss.

early in the early 2000s and was looking for these causal links between mercury and vaccines.

Do you buy that excuse?

Mm-hmm.

Tell them what you will do, and then remind people about the alternative and how crazy it is.

They're not doing anything but the third.

And like a three-legged stool, if you're only using one leg, you will fall down.

The Republicans are missing the first two.

They're not talking about what that they've done, and they've got a lot of great things.

The Big Beautiful Bill, Trump RX, Trump Accounts are all great things that are making people more, uh, things more affordable, that are giving them a better life in the future for them and their kids, that are bringing down the price of prescription drugs.

Yes.

Having lived that hell yourself, what's the one mistake that you think she's making that you would fix tomorrow?

Interesting.

I didn't think you'd go in that direction.

I thought you'd ask me to.

I don't know.

I mean, look, I actually think.

It's the opposite, which is they've had the opportunity to see, I mean, in Caroline's case, four other press secretaries.

Ego.

Right.

But the one thing that I'll disagree with the analysis on is I, I think there's two aspects of this.

Two things can be true at once.

There can be vandals that have done things, and there can be a botched install- uh, installation, and I believe that this is a case of that being true, meaning that there are, there is, uh ...

I- if you don't follow Emily Miller on, on Instagram, she has documented this stuff like nothing else.

And she shows that there were cuts and there were things.

So I believe, based on just what I've watched, that two things are true.

Okay