Donald Trump throws Sarah Huckabee Sanders under the bus
As was so humorously spelled out by comedian Michelle Wolf this week, the real job of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is to go to the press briefing podium each day and lie on Donald Trump’s behalf. But Huckabee Sanders can only lie effectively if she knows what the truth is to begin with, so she can avoid stepping in it. It turns out Trump threw her under the bus today with regard to the Michael Cohen payoff.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced from the podium two months ago that Donald Trump had no idea Michael Cohen had paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels on his behalf. Then last night Trump’s new attorney Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News and admitted that Trump not only knew about the payoff, he reimbursed Cohen for it. The trouble: no one bothered to tell Huckabee Sanders that the official party line was being changed.
Huckabee Sanders went to the podium today having no idea how to respond to the turn of events, and she ended up basically having to admit that Trump lied to her about it. This served to further erode whatever tiny speck of credibility that she might have still had in the eyes of some observers. There are few things worse than having to admit that you lied to the public because your boss lied to you. It also means that she didn’t have time to come up with a creative new lie aimed at glossing over the fact that she’d been caught lying about it to begin with.
Sooner or later Trump throws all his own loyalists under the bus in the hope of protecting himself. Just ask Michael Cohen, or Paul Manafort, or Michael Flynn, or Dr. Harold Bornstein, or anyone else who has been discarded for the greater glory of Donald Trump. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is no different. She’s destroyed herself by lying on Trump’s behalf every day, and now he’s rewarding her by sending her out there unprepared to dance around the lie he’d originally told her.
