Sarah Huckabee Sanders has announced that she will be leaving her role as White House Press Secretary at the end of June. Her 2-1/2-year tenure was one of the longest for a member of the Trump Administration. Sanders cited spending more time with her kids as one of her reasons for stepping down.
“I am blessed and forever grateful to @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to serve and proud of everything he’s accomplished. I love the President and my job,” Sanders tweeted on June 13. “The most important job I’ll ever have is being a mom to my kids and it’s time for us to go home. Thank you Mr. President!”
When her departure was announced, she said at the podium, “It’s truly the most special experience. The only one that I could think could top it is the fact that I’m a mom.”
As Donald Trump’s apologist, Sanders was sometimes also Trump’s scapegoat. A large part of Sarah Sanders’ White House legacy will indeed be her lies on behalf of Trump. One wonders, then, how she will frame this fact as she goes home to her kids to do what she says is “the most important job,” since an important part of that job is to be an example.
Sarah Sanders’ big, bold, globally publicized lies include her lie about how “countless members of the FBI” were “thankful and grateful” for FBI Director James Comey’s firing, and that they had lost faith in him as a leader. Sanders later tried to walk this lie back by calling it at one time “a slip of the tongue,” and at another time, a remark made “in the heat of the moment.”
Other well-known Sanders lies include the one about Trump’s lack of knowledge of his personal attorney’s hush money payments to women who allegedly had affairs with Trump (Trump knew); Trump’s “never having encouraged violence at MAGA rallies” (Trump frequently did just that with his verbal commentary); and the one where she said that 4,000 suspected or known terrorists had tried to enter the U.S. at its southern boarder (in reality, the count is a mere six).
And then there was the altered video Sarah Sanders tweeted, showing CNN journalist Jim Acosta appearing to accost an intern. Sanders claimed that the video documented Acosta’s “inappropriate behavior,” which was the reason for the temporary revocation of his press pass. The original, unaltered video showed that Acosta did not accost the intern.
One assumes that for most parents, honesty is an important trait to pass to one’s children. It would be interesting to see how Sarah Sanders handles the teaching of this lesson. Any of the lies her children might tell, though, such as “I came home late because I ran out of gas,” or “I was at Brittany’s house all night,” or “I don’t know how that bottle of Seagram’s got to be empty,” will likely pale in comparison to the very public, very far-reaching whoppers that Sarah Sanders has told.
Sarah Sanders to leave White House at end of June | Associated Press
[2019-06-13]
Did Sarah Sanders live up to her own standard? | Washington Post
[2019-06-14]
