Tag Archives: Sarah Huckabee Sanders

national news

Coming clean on a one-time personal secret

The recent dust-up involving a former White House press flack and a former U.S. vice president brings to mind a reason I have much empathy for the ex-VP.

Joe Biden endured a stuttering problem as a boy. He powered through it. He mentioned it during the Democratic presidential candidate joint appearance the other night, eliciting a stupidly snarky response from Sarah Huckabee Sanders … who later apologized for the way she responded to Biden’s acknowledgement.

I find myself, thus, feeling a bit of empathy for Biden. Why? I, too, endured a stuttering problem as a boy. It wasn’t a debilitating stutter. I was able to communicate most of the time. Indeed, I was able to do so almost all the time. Certain sounds, though, did get in the way. The sound of the letter “k,” for instance, at the beginning of certain words is an example of that.

Think of the hideousness of that example. My last name begins with that sound. Therein lies the source of my embarrassment. I once had to stand in front of a roomful of high school students and say my name. I couldn’t get it out. Two of those classmates of mine thought that was just so damn funny; they had a riotous time making fun of me.

Therefore, I was bullied for the rest of my time in high school. It wasn’t fun, man.

I have gotten through my own stuttering issue. I hesitate to call it a “problem,” because it didn’t inhibit me from enjoying a modestly successful career over the years. I, do, though admire those who are able to get past far more debilitating ailments than the one I endured.

Joe Biden happens to be a prominent American politician who is now seeking the presidency.

If nothing else happens to his candidacy — be it a self-inflicted wound or something that someone else reveals about him — I am inclined to cut this guy with whom I share a common experience a little more slack than I otherwise might be inclined to do.

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WH press secretaries: from bad to worse to utterly abysmal

I never thought I would see the day when a White House press secretary could make Sean Spicer look good.

Consider this:

Spicer was the first White House press flack hired by Donald Trump. Spicer “distinguished” himself at his first press briefing by challenging media reports about the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd, contending that the president drew the largest such gathering in the nation’s history. It didn’t go well for Spicer after that. He resigned and now he’s on “Dancing With the Stars.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders succeeded Spicer and became a shill for the serial liar who hired her. Sanders ended up suspending the White House press briefings altogether. She quit, too.

Now we have Stephanie Grisham, who this weekend said that former White House chief of staff John Kelly was — get ready for this one! — “totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.”

Wow, man!

The “genius” of Donald Trump? She’s saying the president is a “genius”? The guy who cannot spell his way out of a third-grade lunchroom? The individual who conducts presidential policy nearly exclusively via Twitter? The candidate who launches into nonsensical, irrational, incoherent tirades at campaign rallies? The guy who cannot string two sentences together?

I know next to nothing about Stephanie Grisham, other than she has yet to answer questions in a roomful of reporters assigned to cover the White House.

Her statement about John Kelly — the decorated combat veteran, the retired four-star Marine Corps general, the Gold Star dad whose son died in combat in Afghanistan — confirms to me that her bulb is as dim as the one burning inside the skull of the president.

media news

Sanders’s WH legacy? The destruction of the press office

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving the White House with a remarkably dubious legacy. She has played a major role in destroying the office she is about to vacate: the office of White House press secretary.

Sanders has quit conducting press briefings. She no longer stands before the press corps and answers questions. No doubt some of those questions are aggressive, even hostile. The media have been declared “the enemy of the people” by Sanders’s boss, Donald Trump.

Sanders’s then had to face that group and attempt to convey presidential policy. She did a lousy job of lying on behalf of the president. For that matter, Sanders can be “credited” with being “transparent,” if you want to call it that. She lied quite openly, even in the face of evidence that contradicted her directly.

Sure, she got beat up. Then again, so did a lot of press secretaries over many previous administrations. I wrote a blog post earlier today about one of her predecessors, George E. Christian, who served as press secretary during President Johnson’s second term. The press savaged Christian, too, over the conduct of the Vietnam War. Did that man shirk his duty? Did he ever stop delivering regular press briefings? No. He answered the call.

Sanders chickened out.

Now she’s about to be gone. Who will the president appoint to succeed this individual? My hope would be someone who would have the fortitude and the character to do his or her job, which is report the truth to the media, which then would report it all the public.

I have little faith that Donald Trump will do the right thing.

media news

WH press flack is leaving; but the lying will continue

I now will join the chorus of those who are saying that Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s pending departure from the White House will be no great loss to the cause of transparency, accountability … and telling Americans the truth about what their government is doing.

Sanders has served for a couple of years as White House press secretary. I was one who thought at the very beginning of her tenure that she could repair the mess left by her predecessor, Sean Spicer.

Oh, my. I was so wrong!

We now have heard, via special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into the Russian collusion matter, that Sanders actually admitted to Mueller’s legal team that she lied on behalf of the president.

Astounding, yes? Yep, it is.

The regular White House press briefings have been relegated to some form of dormancy. This comes after Sanders spent a good deal of her time parroting Donald Trump’s mantra that any news that he deems critical to be “fake news.” She even uses the term “fake news” while talking to the very journalists who were questioning her.

Sanders’s most ferocious critics have suggested she has attacked the First Amendment. Surely she has joined the president in denigrating media reporters, editors and others charged with the duty of chronicling the news coming from the Trump administration.

I am one observer who won’t miss her.

The task now for the president is to find a successor who will talk candidly, openly and — and most critically — truthfully when faced with the media’s often-aggressive questioning.

I know it’s a huge stretch to think Trump will find such a person, given his own paranoia about the media.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s upcoming departure merely closes another dark chapter in the administration she served.

national news

Stop the ‘what about-ism’ with election interference

I totally understand that the Russian attack on our electoral system during the 2016 presidential election occurred during President Obama’s administration.

I’ve noted as much in this blog.

That all said, I am growing weary of Donald Trump’s team reminding us of that while suggesting that the current president is taking steps to ensure that it won’t happen again.

Fiddlesticks!

It’s not happening. FBI director Christopher Wray has reminded us that the Russians conducted a comprehensive attack on our system in 2016; they doubled down in 2018; and they are now preparing to engage in what Wray called “the big show,” which is the 2020 presidential election.

The Trump administration needs to demonstrate graphically that it is in fact taking measures to ensure that the Russians will not do once again what they have done in our nation’s most two most recent election cycles.

White House press secretary — and serial liar — Sarah Huckabee Sanders told us yet again that the Obama administration is the real villain here.

No! She’s got it wrong! Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that Vladimir Putin is the No. 1 bad guy betrays the president’s lack of commitment to protecting the nation’s election system against a foreign hostile power.

media news

You can resign now, Sarah Huckabee Sanders

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Let’s see now. How is this supposed to go?

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press flack, is supposed to deliver briefings to the media covering the White House. And the media representatives gathered before her are supposed to accept what she says as the truth.

Is that how it works? Even after special counsel Robert Mueller’s damning report has revealed Sanders to be as terrible a liar as her boss, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump Sr.?

In no way can Sarah H. Sanders continue in her role as the spokeswoman for the White House. She needs to quit.  She needs to disappear from the White House Press Briefing Room. She needs to no longer speak publicly about policy matters relating to the commander in chief.

She cannot be trusted any more than her boss, the most untrustworthy man ever to sit in that big ol’ chair behind the Oval Office desk.

Sanders was quizzed on morning news talk shows this week after  Mueller’s report went public. Mueller chronicles how Sanders lied to the media about the reasons Trump fired FBI director James Comey. She said at the time that “countless” FBI personnel had expressed dismay at Comey’s leadership. It wasn’t true. Mueller called her on it. When pressed by media reps, Sanders said she committed a “slip of the tongue.” She didn’t mean “countless.” Oh, but then she said later that “many” had spoken ill of Comey.

She is without trust. Sanders cannot speak with any veracity any longer.

It’s not that Trump deserves a truth-teller to speak for him. The man cannot tell the truth himself. Thus, he is getting what he deserves. The losers are members of the media, who report the news to the public.

If this individual, Sanders, cannot speak to the media directly, then her job is over. She has nothing left to do, nothing to offer.

You may quit any time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Robert Mueller has revealed you to be a liar. In no way can you be trusted from this moment forward.

media news

WH press flack: tailor-made for her job

Well now. What do you think about this?

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report on his probe of The Russia Thing and alleged collusion and obstruction has disclosed that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is good at her job as White House press secretary.

By that I mean she is able to lie with a straight face. Just like her boss, the president of the United States.

It turns out that Mueller determined that Sanders lied when she told reporters that Trump fired FBI director James Comey because the FBI boss had lost credibility within the agency he led.

Her pants shoulda caught fire!

Lying ain’t cool

Comey had not lost any trust among his senior aides or rank-and-file agents. Trump fired him because he wouldn’t pledge loyalty to the president and wouldn’t go soft on his investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government operatives.

It turns out, too, that Sanders’s predecessor as White House flack, Sean Spicer, also lied about Comey’s performance as FBI director. So the two of them — Spicer and Sanders — appeared to do the president’s bidding.

The press secretary is ostensibly charged with telling the media the truth about what the executive branch of government is doing on our behalf. The press adviser talks to the media. He or she speaks for the president. The media then report to the nation and the world what the press secretary says on the president’s behalf. Yes, they question the press secretary, seeking answers to key questions.

The stories emanating from the White House, the press office and the Justice Department are getting murkier by the hour as the nation starts to digest the contents of the Mueller report.

We appear to be getting a clearer picture, though, of the individual who serves as spokeswoman for the president of the United States. Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies with the best of ’em.

national news

Dems ‘not smart enough’ to read POTUS taxes? Why, I never …

White House press flack Sarah Huckabee Sanders said this weekend that Democratic lawmakers aren’t “smart enough” to pore over Donald Trump’s tax returns.

If I were a Democratic lawmaker I would take serious offense at what she said.

Two reasons stand out:

(a) Democrats can hire tax accountants to interpret all the fine points for me. Surely someone with an MBA can determine whether the president has paid his fair share of taxes, or whether he has business interests in Russia that might be construed as putting him in a compromising position.

(b) Democratic members of Congress are as smart as their Republican friends and colleagues. They surely are as smart as the president and — dare I say it — his press secretary.

Well, all that aside, for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to toss a heaping helpful of Trump-like disrespect is insulting on its face.

But . . . the Trump base loves it when the president and his flack are “telling it like it is.”

national news

Great job, fella . . . but hit the road

This kind of thing drives me nuts when I hear about matters such as this. A public servant is fired from his or her job and the guy to whom the person reports tells us all what a “great” job he or she did.

If the person getting canned is doing a great job, wouldn’t that person keep his or her job?

They’re cleaning house

U.S. Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles is heading for the exits. Donald Trump instructed White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to fire Alles. So, he did.

Then press secretary Sarah Hucakabee Sanders said on behalf of the president that Alles had done a great job running the agency that used to be part of the Treasury Department, but has moved to the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “resigned” effective immediately over differences with Trump on immigration policy. The president thanked her for her service. That’s it. Message received: Nielsen wasn’t cutting it at DHS, in Trump’s view.

But the Secret Service ouster appears to be part a wholesale housecleaning at DHS.

I’ve read the reports that the man/child behind the shakeup is that 30-something whiz kid/maniac Stephen Miller, who seems to believe that the president needs to get even more harsh on immigrants, legal and illegal alike.

This isn’t fun to watch, no matter the president, the party or the policy involved.

national news

POTUS seeks to rally the base, ‘er, nation?

Donald Trump wants to go on national TV to rally Americans to his side as he pitches the idea of building The Wall along our southern border.

I believe the networks ought to carry the president’s televised speech Tuesday night. Let the man have his say and let the public debate and decide on the veracity of what he is contending.

Trump is considering whether to declare a national emergency to obtain money for The Wall. Why? Because he contends that terrorists are crossing an “open border.” He is trying to gin up fear, in my view, among Americans.

Oh, but wait. We are now getting reports from other sources that say that a grand total of six suspected terrorists were apprehended along the border in 2018, not the reported 4,000 of them alleged by the Trump administration.

Indeed, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, interviewing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Sunday, challenged her 4,000-terrorist assertion by declaring that those suspects are being apprehended at our nation’s airports.

So now we’re going to hear from the commander in chief about what looks like a fabricated crisis along our border.

Please . . .