Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
The nation in brief
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Oftentimes, people want to make politicians perfect. And that’s one of the actual beauties of Christianity, is understanding that no one is.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, describing working on behalf of President Donald Trump
Pickle did not go as planned.
When Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the newly minted White House press secretary, began her first official briefing by reading a child’s letter to President Donald Trump — “Everybody calls me Pickle, I’m 9 years old, and you’re my favorite president” — the backlash was swift.
Reporters called it a transparent attempt to distract from several scandals roiling the White House. Theories surfaced that Trump, who once impersonated his own spokesman, had written the missive himself. (He didn’t.)
“I didn’t know it was going to be such a controversy,” Sanders said in an interview last week in her spartan West Wing office. “I was like, what has happened in America when a kid writes a very innocent, nice letter, and it turns into, like, handwriting specialists and psychologists?”
The Pickle affair offered insight into the distrust that has developed between the Trump administration and the journalists whose work the president derides as “fake news.” And it underscored the nature of Sanders’ new job: Defending a president in conflict with the news media and representing an administration that has repeatedly been denounced for playing loose with facts.
Sanders, who inherited her position when her predecessor, Sean Spicer, quit, is trying to manage coverage of a tumultuous White House while mollifying a boss who believes he is his own best spokesman.
“It’s a challenging position under any president, much more so under President Trump,” said Scott McClellan, a former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “She can help the president advance his agenda and broaden his appeal beyond his base, if — and it’s a big ‘if’ — he will avoid undermining her.”
In a White House of outsize characters, Sanders, 34, has flown under the radar — Trump, for all his use of social media, has never posted on Twitter about her by name. If Spicer’s gaffe-prone briefings mutated into unhelpful spectacles, Sanders’ sessions tend to be flat and uneventful, not necessarily a bad thing for a stormy administration.
An evangelical who reads from a book of Christian devotionals before every briefing — and the daughter of the pastor-turned-presidential-candidate Mike Huckabee, a former Republican governor of Arkansas — Sanders is an unlikely public face for Trump, who is known for airing grievances without reservation.
“I certainly didn’t approve of a couple of the comments,” Sanders said of her time on Trump’s campaign, where she served as an adviser and on-air surrogate. “But at the same time, we were looking for a commander in chief, not a pastor.”
“Oftentimes, people want to make politicians perfect,” she added. “And that’s one of the actual beauties of Christianity, is understanding that no one is.”
She is the first mother to serve as press secretary and is among the youngest to take on the role. At the lectern, she is folksy but nimble: She recently deflected questions about “chaos” in the White House by inviting reporters to visit the three preschoolers in her living room. There were laughs, even as Sanders sidestepped the question.
She is also unafraid to call out reporters and news coverage that she deems unfair. Asked in the interview whether the establishment media is biased against Trump, she replied, “Absolutely.”
“I’ve never seen the level of hostility that this press corps has to the president,” she said.
Behind the scenes, reporters who cover the West Wing say Sanders can be friendly and warm — the good cop to Spicer’s barking sergeant. Last week, several dozen journalists and White House aides, including Kellyanne Conway, toasted Sanders’ promotion at an all-female “women of the White House” happy hour at a Washington hotel bar.
But like Spicer, Sanders at times has drawn criticism for some dubious assertions.
Confronted with Trump’s call for law enforcement agents to rough up gang suspects, she said the president “was making a joke.” While denouncing CNN, she urged Americans to watch a video critical of the network by a rightist activist, James O’Keefe, “whether it’s accurate or not.”
When a reporter asked whether Trump had lied about a laudatory phone call from the Boy Scouts, Sanders shot back: “That’s a pretty bold accusation.” She also conceded that the call had not happened.
The president’s volatility has caught her off guard. In May, Sanders, then deputy press secretary, told reporters that Trump had not made up his mind to fire his FBI director, James Comey, until after he received a recommendation from the Justice Department. The next day, Trump said the opposite.
“Her predecessor to a large degree was willingly sacrificing his credibility, and he was put in a bad position,” McClellan said. “The challenge will be not to sacrifice the strength that she brings.”
Sanders was enjoying a relatively quiet Twitter day during the interview. She said she was looking forward to some downtime with her husband and their three children, whose artwork hangs above her desk.
Asked about Trump’s unpredictability, Sanders stayed on message.
“We have no two days that are alike, which I love,” she said. (Huckabee was more candid on a radio show in June, saying, “He makes my daughter’s job very difficult with tweets like that.”)
Steeped in politics since grade school, Sanders remembers poring over poll results with the consultant Dick Morris at the family’s kitchen table.
“Looking back, that was probably not the most normal thing in the world,” she recalled.
At 25, Sanders helped her father win an upset victory in the 2008 Iowa caucus. In 2016, she managed his presidential bid until he dropped out. “That didn’t go so well,” she said, wryly.
She wakes up at 5 a.m. to spend time with her children and talk with her father, who texts her feedback after briefings.
“She’s not easily rattled,” Huckabee said of his daughter’s calm demeanor at the lectern. “She’s not going to throw punches just because she can.”
Not every reporter is pleased with her approach.
“I don’t want to hear anymore about the chaos in her home,” said Brian Karem, a White House correspondent for the Sentinel newspapers in Maryland who has clashed with Sanders. “If she tells me one more story about how three preschoolers can be more chaotic than a hundred and some odd reporters in the White House press office, I’ll even volunteer to baby-sit.”
Dana Perino, Bush’s fourth press secretary, said such criticism misses the mark.
“The reporters will roll their eyes,” she said. “But Sarah isn’t doing that for the press — she’s doing it for their supporters and their base. The more they make fun of it, the more she’ll do it.”
Sanders said that talking about family came naturally — “That’s just kind of who I am” — and she scolded some journalists for seeking “gotcha” moments.
“We may from the outside seem more adversarial” than past administrations, Sanders said, “but you should see the hundred stories I deal with before going out there. Some of the most outrageous claims with no facts, no sourcing. It’s like, ‘an unnamed source close to the White House.’ I’m like: ‘What does that mean? The guy that works at the coffee shop across the street?’ You have to give me more than that.”
White House advisers say Sanders has grown closer with Trump, who approves of her even-keeled briefings.
In the interview, Sanders heaped praise on Trump, calling him “a great guy” and “a fighter.” Twice, she said, “I love the president,” echoing a favorite phrase of Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as communications director.
Huckabee, asked whether he has qualms about his daughter representing Trump, said he was proud.
“I know she’s doing everything she can to be straightforward and honest,” Huckabee said. “I know that she is going to be loyal to a fault.”