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.
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 a former Trump spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, a onetime establishment type I knew a little bit. 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.