The negativity of the Trump administration follows those who worked in it for long after they left. That includes Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served for a comparatively long, very public stint as White House press secretary. Like other Trump officials like Corey Lewandowski and Mike Pompeo, she’s been rumored to be eyeing a run for statewide office in her home state of Arkansas, and as that circulates, The New York Times published a widely derided “puff piece” that included her complaining about getting called a liar. The Arkansas Times‘ editor Max Brantley denounced the piece and Sanders in his own rebuttal published in the Arkansas Times.
He wrote:
‘It is such a puff piece (and reminiscent of when a Key White House correspondent rose to Sanders’ defense when she was the butt of jokes at a correspondents’ dinner) that many couldn’t help wonder if it was payback for source services. Perheps not. Sanders has ever — and in this article — been loyal to Donald Trump.’
He further notes that it’s the quote about the lying that has attracted most of the condemnation. At that point, he resorts to a comment from former New York Times reporter Clyde Haberman, who noted:
‘Of course there was an easy way for her to avoid being called that when she was Trump’s press secretary. She could’ve tried not lying.’
“I don’t like being called a liar,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells @anniekarni in @nytimes.
Of course there was an easy way for her to avoid being called that when she was Trump’s press secretary. She could’ve tried not lying.https://t.co/BOx7z6jlto— Clyde Haberman (@ClydeHaberman) November 25, 2019
Indeed — if Sanders had such a problem with getting called a liar, she could have tried not lying! At one point, she went so far down the rabbit hole of a lie that FBI agents supported President Donald Trump firing their agency’s director James Comey that she made up that she had documentation of the complaints. The final report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation revealed that lie, and she responded to the reveal by simply insisting that actually, she wasn’t lying. It’s like the president and those closest to him have a pathological fear of admitting even the slightest error.
Besides the issue of the incessant lying that she’s only just now gotten a problem with, Brantley also mockingly noted that Sanders insisted she feels “called” to run for something like the governorship.
He wrote:
‘Sanders says she feels “called” to run for statewide office, though not ready to declare candidacy just yet. A mission from God, I guess, just like the Blues Brothers.’
It’s not the first time that disturbingly apocalyptic terminology has surfaced from the Trump team — just recently, an interview came out in which outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry called Trump himself a “chosen one” who’s been “sent to do great things.” Trump has used that language for himself too in the context of trade negotiations with China.
Sanders just barely escaped some of the biggest onslaught delivered via the currently ongoing impeachment inquiry. That inquiry’s initial public impeachment hearings recently concluded, and now, the House Judiciary Committee has a further hearing set for December 4. The House Intelligence Committee already accumulated plenty of damaging evidence like an insistence from E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland that “everyone was in the loop” about a quid pro quo targeting Ukraine.
