Cliff Sims
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
You had senior advisor, deputy national security advisor, Ivanka.
and the head of the National Economic Council.
That's it on the top floor of the White House.
So in all of that, we're talking, you know, 20 principals in there.
It's kind of the top level people in the West Wing, and then they have some support staff with them.
Everybody else is next door in the Eisenhower Executive Office building.
And so there are hundreds of people over there.
But it really shocks people when they walk in, especially if your only context is you've watched the West Wing TV show, which is kind of what got me into politics to begin with, was like binge watching the West Wing and wondering what must happen behind those white walls and curtain windows.
And the real life West Wing is so small that you wouldn't be able to shoot a TV show in there because the halls are so cramped.
You wouldn't be able to fit people in a camera.
And like the walk and talk scenes they do wouldn't work in the real West Wing.
So I will say my experience in the White House was
one of the most amazing experiences of my life, one of the most frustrating and exasperating experiences of my life, in some ways an experience that I would not want to have again, and on the other hand, an experience that I would love to go back tomorrow and let's dive right back into it.
So it's like every extreme that you can imagine, both good and bad, I feel like I experienced in there professionally, and then also,
in terms of what it does to you from a character standpoint, what it reveals about you as a person.
I learned a lot of stuff about myself that I don't think I would have otherwise had a reason to learn.
On the good end of that spectrum,
They're just things that you see in there that where else in the world are you going to see some of the things that they're experiencing, some of the things that you experience?
If you think about it, anybody who comes in to meet with the president is at the top of their field.
So it's a king, it's a prime minister, it's a president,