It isn’t exactly a secret that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders iss more than willing to lie for President Trump at every given opportunity. Ranging from the most subtle manipulation of the facts to the most blatant and outright, easily fact-checked lie, that willingness to spout the president’s dishonest talking points has rightfully earned Sanders a reputation for lacking any sort of credibility.
Her latest lie falls into the range of those easily fact-checked. On Saturday night, Sanders tweeted a photo of Trump with top members of his administration, looking busy and engaged and serious during the bombing in Syria.
The photo is meant to call to mind one of the most famous of President Obama’s White House photographs, taken the night that Osama bin Laden was found and killed. That photograph captured the gravity of the moment and the heavy burden of responsibility placed on President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and everyone else involved.
There is a significant difference, however, between the Obama Situation Room photo and the one of Trump’s cabinet. There is a problem with who is pictured in the photo.
Sanders tweeted the photo while talking about “last night,” which would refer to Friday night, the night of the bombing in Syria. However, unless Vice President Mike Pence has some sort of teleportation machine or perhaps Hermione Granger’s time turner from the Harry Potter books, it is not possible that he sat at that table on Friday night while plans were made for the military strike. He left for Peru early Friday morning, several hours before the strike was announced or carried out.
Trump complains endlessly that the media is unfair to him, and Sanders is more than willing to offer snark, condescension, and criticism to reporters in the room during White House press briefings, insisting that the media lies and dredges up any negative story they can find to make Trump and his administration look bad, as if that would be difficult to do.
Perhaps she and the president should stop making it so very easy to criticize them.
Twitter users noticed the glaring mistake and let Sanders know they weren’t being fooled. See some of their responses below:
Featured image via Getty/Mark Wilson