Reporter calls out Sarah Huckabee Sanders to her face over Donald Trump’s lies
Two weeks after major media reports that she was preparing to resign, and after a significant reduction in her presence online and in the briefing room, for some reason White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is still technically on the job. Today she held an increasingly rare press briefing, and right about now she’s probably wishing she hadn’t.
In a sign that the briefing room reporters are either becoming more bold in the face of an increasingly corrupt administration, or more frustrated at the increasing lack of briefings in general, they’ve become far more aggressive of late. Politico reporter Matthew Nussbaum pointed to Donald Trump’s recent pair of tweets in which he encouraged House Republicans to vote for a particular immigration bill, then claimed he had never done so. Then he asked the kind of question that the mainstream media should have been asking all along: “Why would the president lie about something like that?”
Huckabee Sanders looked bewildered, and ultimately responded with a hesitant and emotionless “He didn’t.” She then went on to unconvincingly tell a number of lies of her own, while blaming it all on Senate Democrats. In reality, a large number of House Republicans voted against both of the Republican-sponsored immigration bills, which means that the failure had nothing to do with the Democrats or the Senate.
We don’t know how much longer Sarah Huckabee Sanders will remain on the job, but it’s clear that she mentally checked out a long time ago. Over the weekend Donald Trump quietly hired former Fox News executive Bill Shine as Huckabee Sanders’ new boss, filling the White House Communications Director position that had been vacant for months. Back when Trump brought in Anthony Scaramucci as his Communications Director, the resignation of Press Secretary Sean Spicer came almost immediately.
