“I think a loose cannon is just going off. He knows what he wants to do. You may say, ‘I don’t know why he did this. Or, it could’ve been done better’. But it’s not just for no reason, which is more of how I would define a loose cannon. To me, a loose cannon is just firing off. You may disagree with why he’s doing it, but in almost every case, it’s calculated,” says Sean Spicer.

Hot Press magazine caught up with Sean Spicer first for his most in-depth interview ever, as he prepares to visit Ireland & the UK later this month to promote his new book.

In our remarkable exclusive interview, conducted by Senior Editor Jason O’Toole, the former White House press secretary – one of the few men on the planet who can talk with serious authority about the leader of the free world – admits that Trump caused him huge problems with his unpredictable Tweets.

“It was definitely something that I had to learn to adapt to. Because normally, most politicians would ask you to draft a tweet, or to draft a statement, or a message. And then say, ‘What do you think of this? Let’s talk about it’. He just did it. And it was a different dynamic than I was ever used to.”

Sean Spicer also reflects candidly on his own howlers – including the Presidential camp’s inflation of the figures at Trump’s inauguration and his comment that not even Hitler sank to using chemical weapons.

On the possibility of Trump doing a deal with John Deasy, who was appointed a Irish government envoy to the US Congress to work with the Irish undocumented living in the US , Sean states: “I don’t think he’s going to look at it by country. I think it would become a major problem if he started isolating different immigrants from different backgrounds.”

On Trump’s vulgar comment about grabbing women by the pussy, Sean Sean reflects: “For any other politician, you would think, ‘This is it – game over!’ But, I think, he had shown a level of resilience that no one else had previously shown”

On Trump’s constant attacks on the media, Sean says: “I don’t think that’s the way I would address it.” He adds, “Like I said, I don’t paint everybody with a broad brush. I think there’s some really good reporters and there’s some bad reporters. But we need a free and fair press in our democracy. But I think that you can praise the good and call out the bad. And being good doesn’t mean that they write what you wanted – it just means that they’re professional and fair.”

On writing his resignation letter two months before he resigned, Sean also reveals that he even knew before then that these day was coming, saying: “Yeah. Basically, I knew probably even before that – that’s just actually when I wrote it. I had become the story too often. And I didn’t know when the moment was going to come but I wanted to be ready for it.”

In our exclusive interview, complete with previously unseen pictures from his White House days, Sean Spicer also talks about religion, about his difficult dealings with the White House Press corps, Melissa McCarthy’s depiction of him on Saturday Night Live, why resigning was the hardest decision he ever had to make, and admits that making those comments about Hitler was the most “painful” mistake of his career...