Inside Trump’s Spin Room From Hell
What losing looks and feels like.
WHEN IT COMES TO SPIN ROOMS there is one unimpeachable truism that political hacks of all stripes can agree on: A winning candidate needn’t show up there.
So when the Secret Service arrived at the Pennsylvania Convention Center after Tuesday night’s presidential debate across the street at the National Constitution Center, the room began to buzz. We all knew which of the night’s two combatants felt compelled to appear before the assembled press.
The one who spent the evening on the receiving end of a spanking.1
Burnt-sienna face paint melting around the edges, shoulders sagging, lips and neck hole pursed, Donald Trump shambled over to the bank of cameras. Reporters shouted questions about his bizarre claim that immigrants were eating pets. They wondered if he would debate his foe again, why he was so rattled by her, and whether he was disappointed that she had earned the coveted Taylor Swift endorsement.
Standing in the back, I tried to get in the mix, shouting repeatedly—to one communications staffer’s great annoyance—about Trump’s inability even to look in the alpha dog vice president’s general direction. “Why wouldn’t you even look at her?” I yelled out again and again.
At one point it seemed as if he heard it, glancing my direction. But he looked away, desperate to find some more friendly turf. For a few minutes he stood there, halfheartedly claiming that he had won the debate and implausibly explaining his presence as a result of “promises” he made to appear on his beloved cable news. Eventually, he shuffled back behind the pipe and drape, flanked by staffers who were alternately red-faced or ashen. For Donald Trump and his surrogates, this was the spin room from hell.
Naturally, I was giddy.
There is no job in politics less fun than being the spin-room representative for a loser. Trust me, I’ve been there. You stand underneath a placard with your name, but you raise it only to half-mast in the hopes that the media jackals find some other prey first.
Just after Trump’s lame spin-room performance, I encountered Trump spokesman Tim Murtaugh, a onetime establishment type I knew a little bit.2 He was huddled closely with one of the Washington Examiner’s MAGA content generators, Byron York. I leaned over and observed that Murtaugh had found a friendly voice. “Byron will write you something good,” I said. As Murtaugh grimaced at me, York grunted out “Fuck you.”
Then there was Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, who hip-checked me following a debate eight years ago. After a brief reminiscence about those spin rooms past, I asked him what he thought Trump’s best answer was at the debate. “There were so many good answers,” he said before briskly departing my company. His former partner-in-crime David Bossie was even more flummoxed by that query. “That’s a good question. You are putting me on the spot,” he said, retreating to an easier subject, the former president’s record.
The surrogate most interested in engaging with me was another old friend, Lindsey Graham. I happened to bump into him in an empty hallway just outside the spin room on my way back from our Bulwark livestream.
I asked Graham whether the debate made him more likely to come back around to our shared anti-Trump view from the glory days of 2016. Getting red-faced, the senator lashed out at me, saying I should be “ashamed” for opposing Trump. A heated back-and-forth ensued where he argued for Trump’s record and I reminded him that the Trump presidency ended with Graham running for his life from the supporters whom the former president had sicced on the Capitol.
Eventually, Graham offered a fist bump, leaned in, and with an exasperated grin gave me his candid assessment of the night: Trump’s performance was a “disaster,” Trump was unprepared, and his debate team should be fired. I concurred, made one more pass at the podcast invitation, and walked back toward the magnetometers while immediately tweeting this delicious concession. (Not long after, the senator posted a photo of Trump—hunched, tired, stone-faced—shaking Graham’s hand. In the caption, Graham reiterated his “proud” support of Trump.)
Later I asked Matt Gaetz, who was sporting Trump Force One tennis shoes, what he thought about Graham’s call for his head—after all, Gaetz was part of the team that supposedly prepared Trump for the debate. In the spin room, Gaetz managed to do what Trump had been unable to do the entire night: avoid the bait and pivot to his message, before eventually relenting that sometimes he thinks Graham should be fired as well—“usually when he’s trying to start wars.”
Zing.
Eventually the opportunities to engage with MAGA surrogates became thin. Vivek, Tulsi, and RFK were swarmed by a kettle of vultures too thick for me to break through. The rest were too pathetic to contemplate speaking to.
So I retreated to the more placid confines of Harris surrogates. They were raising their placards high and proud.
Coming off the MSNBC set, I caught California Governor Gavin Newsom, smile wide, hair uncharacteristically unkempt. Our last encounter was in a similar setting two months prior, following his attempt to put on a brave face for Joe Biden.
He locked eyes with me and immediately launched into a victorious spiel. “From minute one she owned him,” he said. “Now he knows her name.”
He then repeated the victor’s name purposefully. Each syllable in staccato.
“Kah-muh-luh. Kah-muh-luh.”
As my punchy colleague Michael Steele put it on MSNBC After Dark.
Correction (September 11, 2024, 2:00 p.m. EDT): When originally published, this piece incorrectly stated that Tim Murtaugh is a former Trump spokesperson; Murtaugh is a Trump spokesperson currently.