Tag: Sarah Huckabee Sanders

White House drafts more clearance cancellations demanded by Trump

The following article by Karen DeYoung and Josh Dawsey was posted on the Washington Post website August 17, 2018:

President Trump on Aug. 17 defended his action toward ex-CIA director John Brennan, warning former associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr could be next. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The White House has drafted documents revoking the security clearances of current and former officials whom President Trump has demanded be punished for criticizing him or playing a role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to senior administration officials.

Trump wants to sign “most if not all” of them, said one senior White House official, who indicated that communications aides, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Bill Shine, the newly named deputy chief of staff, have discussed the optimum times to release them as a distraction during unfavorable news cycles.

Some presidential aides echoed concerns raised by outside critics that the threatened revocations smack of a Nixonian enemies list, with little or no substantive national security justification. Particular worry has been expressed inside the White House about Trump’s statement Friday that he intends “very quickly” to strip the clearance of current Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

View the complete article here.

Huckabee Sanders apologizes for false statement about black employment

The following article by Jeff Stein was posted on the Washington Post website August 14, 2018:

When asked if a tape of Trump using the n-word exists, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she “can’t guarantee anything.” Credit: Reuters

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders apologized late Tuesday for wrongly stating that President Trump has created three times as many jobs for black workers as President Barack Obama did.

At a news conference Tuesday, Sanders said Obama created 195,000 jobs for African Americans during his eight years in office.

“When President Obama left after eight years in office — eight years in office — he had only created 195,000 jobs for African Americans,” Sanders told reporters. “President Trump in his first year and a half has already tripled what President Obama did in eight years.”

View the complete article here.

White House press secretary can’t guarantee public won’t hear Trump use n-word on audio recording

The following article by John Wagner and Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website August 14, 2018:

When asked if a tape of Trump using the n-word exists, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she “can’t guarantee anything.” Credit: Reuters

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that she couldn’t guarantee that the American people will never hear President Trump uttering the n-word on an audio recording, as a former senior White House adviser continued a publicity tour to promote her new book depicting the president as a racist.

The briefing by Sanders came after Trump referred to the former adviser, Omarosa Manigault Newman, as “that dog” in a morning tweet.

“I can’t guarantee anything, but I can tell you that the president addressed this question directly,” Sanders said. “I can tell you that I’ve never heard it.”

View the complete article here.

If we didn’t know better, we’d think Sarah Huckabee Sanders wasn’t interested in holding press briefings

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website August 10, 2018:

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on Aug. 1. Credit: AP

During President Barack Obama’s last full year in office, former White House press secretary Josh Earnest stayed busy. From Jan. 1, 2016, until Dec. 31 of that year, Earnest and his deputies held 143 press briefings and 45 less-formal press gaggles, running 11,826 minutes in total. That’s more than 197 hours — more than eight continuous days — in which Earnest or another administration official spoke to and answered questions from the press.

Over the last four months of the Obama administration alone, Earnest and his team spent about 2,803 minutes before the press in 41 briefings and gaggles.

That’s slightly more time than press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her team have spent with the press in the nearly 13 months she’s held that position.

View the complete article here.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders uses a debunked story to blame the media for damaging the hunt for bin Laden

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website August 1, 2018:

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Aug. 1 called insults shouted at CNN reporter Jim Acosta by President Trump’s supporters “freedom of speech.” (Reuters)

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders just accused the media of hindering the American government’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden just a few years before 9/11. But she may want to check her evidence.

While defending Trump supporters’ vulgar treatment of a CNN reporter at a rally Tuesday night in Florida, Sanders argued that the media has a responsibility to report accurately because the stakes are so large. But rather than dwell upon recent examples of supposedly shoddy reporting, like she usually does, she went back 20 years, to 1998.

“The media routinely reports on classified information and government secrets that put lives in danger and risk valuable national security tools,” Sanders said, clearly reading a prepared bit of gaslighting. “One of the worst cases was the reporting on the U.S. ability to listen to Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone in the late ’90s. Because of that reporting, he stopped using that phone, and the country lost valuable intelligence.”

View the complete article here.

White House attempts to clarify Trump’s response to whether Russia is still targeting U.S. elections

The following article by John Wagner and Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website July 18, 2018:

President Trump said ”no” when asked if he thought Russia was still targeting the U.S. The White House says Trump was rejecting the question not answering it. (Reuters)

For the third straight day, President Trump cast doubt on whether he views Russia as a threat, despite warnings from his own government that Moscow continues to target the United States with hostile actions.

Trump triggered a new uproar Wednesday morning when he appeared to suggest that Russia is no longer seeking to interfere in U.S. elections — prompting the White House to assert hours later that his words had been misconstrued.

At the start of a Cabinet meeting at the White House, a reporter asked Trump, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S., Mr. President?”

View the complete post here.

Let’s Not Confuse Civility With Surrender

The following article by column Connie Schultz was posted on the creators.com website June 27, 2018:

By Guanaco and subsequent editors – SVG source (version of 17:56, 30 Sep 2011), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=479191

Before I sat down to write this column about what it means to be civil in today’s political climate, I took my dog for a walk through our neighborhood.

We live in the largest development built in the city of Cleveland since World War II. It’s diverse, racially and economically, and home to many LGBTQ families, too. On most days, you can’t walk half a block without talking to a neighbor. This morning, that neighbor was Kenn Johnson, who shared a recent story about what it’s like to be a 56-year-old black man shopping in a drugstore in today’s America.

Johnson has his master’s in psychology and has spent much of his career supervising those who work with people with disabilities. More recently, he has started his own consulting business, and he’s also a political organizer.

He uses a skin product that is available, in our neighborhood, at only two drugstores of the same chain. At one of those stores, he was scanning the shelves in the cosmetics aisle, when a voice on the loudspeaker announced, “Customer needs assistance in the cosmetics aisle.”

View the rest of the article here.

Mike Huckabee tweets photo comparing Nancy Pelosi’s campaign staff to MS-13 gang members

The following article by David Weigel and Amy B. Wang was psoted on the Washington Post website June 24, 2018:

Credit: Mike Blake/Reuters

Hours before Mike Huckabee lamented the treatment of his daughter at a Virginia restaurant, the former Arkansas governor tweeted a photo Saturday morning of a group of tattooed gang members and suggested they made up  Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s campaign committee to “take back” the House of Representatives.

The false implication was clear: Huckabee was another of many Republicans once again trying to stick the House minority leader with the image of an MS-13 gang sympathizer. Continue reading “Mike Huckabee tweets photo comparing Nancy Pelosi’s campaign staff to MS-13 gang members”

Recidivism Watch: Trump administration again blames others for its own family separation policy

The following article by Salvador Rizzo was posted on the Washington Post website June 14, 2018:

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blamed the separation of immigrant families on Democrats. (Reuters)

“It’s the law, and that’s what the law states.”
— White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at a news briefing, June 14, 2018

The Trump administration seems to be caught inside a “Twilight Zone” episode, insisting without evidence that its own policy of separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents is somehow a long-standing law and that any blame should go to Democrats.

The president got this ball rolling himself in a series of tweets and statements over the past few months. Continue reading “Recidivism Watch: Trump administration again blames others for its own family separation policy”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders basically just blamed Trump for misleading her

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website May 3, 2018:

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on May 3 said President Trump was not aware in April that he reimbursed Michael Cohen. (Reuters)

Almost nobody was aware Rudolph W. Giuliani was going to blow up the Stormy Daniels situation Wednesday night, and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Thursday this included her. “The first awareness I had was during the interview last night,” Sanders said of Giuliani’s disclosure that President Trump had reimbursed Michael Cohen.

What was most notable was how Sanders basically blamed Trump for her own contradictory statements about Daniels.

Back in March, Sanders denied Trump knew about the payment and said it was based upon her own conversation with Trump. “I’ve had conversations with the president about this,” she said. “This case has already been won in arbitration, and there was no knowledge of any payments from the president, and he has denied all these allegations.” Continue reading “Sarah Huckabee Sanders basically just blamed Trump for misleading her”