Yet, for all Spicer’s bluster, you could usually count on him to engage with your reporting. He was quick to return phone calls and get you the information you needed. He would often take issue with the premise of your questions, but he would do so on the record, in relatively quotable form. He struck a workable balance between belligerence and professionalism, and he didn’t waste your time.

In theory, this should have made Spicer the ideal press secretary for the Trump White House. A seasoned and successful communications operative who nonetheless shared the president’s contempt for the press, Spicer was as well-positioned as anyone to bridge Trump’s populist media-bashing strategy with the kind of favor-trading and access-dangling that every successful White House must engage in. Would Trump choose for his press secretary a transactional veteran with a deep rolodex of D.C. reporters, or a zealous front-line soldier willing to attack the press daily from the briefing podium? In Spicer, Trump got himself a press secretary who could do both.

It didn’t work out. On Friday, news broke that Spicer was resigning from his job—reportedly in protest over Trump’s decision to bring on Anthony Scaramucci, a Fox News soundbite-slinger and hedge-fund manager, to run White House communications.

Spicer’s fall and Scaramuccci’s rise are the latest—and perhaps most significant—signs that the Trump White House has abandoned whatever vision it once had of trying to shape press coverage through diplomacy and dealmaking, and has chosen instead to go all in with its made-for-cable-news culture war against the Fourth Estate.

Spicer’s brief tenure as press secretary will probably be remembered for his most spectacular, high-profile humiliations—the inaugural lie about the Inauguration crowd size; the “holocaust centers” meltdown—and for Melissa McCarthy’s withering impression of him. But the core failures of the Spicer-era communications shop were shaped by Trump himself.

Because the president demanded North Korean levels of message discipline, Spicer was frequently forced to make easily debunked, sky-is-green statements during White House press briefings, and then fiercely defend them against a barrage of Are you serious? pushback from reporters. The press corps expects a certain degree of spin and misdirection from press secretaries, of course—but this Orwellian display was so outlandish that Spicer’s credibility couldn’t survive it. Having lost the press corps’ trust, Spicer’s briefings became largely irrelevant beyond providing fodder for Twitter ridicule.

Meanwhile, Trump’s unpredictability and refusal to be handled made it difficult for Spicer to credibly tempt and threaten reporters with access. This is a common tool that White Houses use to create more positive media coverage, but it only works when the president empowers a gatekeeper. Trump—who hates sticking to strict schedules, and has been known to turn short meet-and-greets with reporters into long, freewheeling interviews—was never going to do that.