End of an Era: Sarah Sanders Stepping Down, Leaves Legacy as Best Press Sec. in Decades
One of the most capable women in Washington is calling it a day.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who has handled the Washington media corps with competent class for almost two full years, is stepping down from her position at the end of June, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday.
And he had high hopes she might follow in her father’s footsteps back home in Arkansas.
“After 3 ½ years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the great state of Arkansas,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post.
“She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas – she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!”
After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019
….She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas – she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019
To call Sanders “special” is the kind of understatement Trump is rarely guilty of.
Since taking over the post in July 2017, Sanders functioned as the adult in the room at White House news briefings, handling the pompous pretensions of divas like CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta with admirable aplomb.
She’s endured public confrontations, like the notorious incident last year when she was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant because its owner and staff didn’t like her politics and came out the bigger person by a long shot.
The best the left could throw at her was probably that disgraceful performance from a nobody “comedian” at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in April 2018, when a routine that was supposed to be played for laughs ended up simply being insulting on a juvenile level.
But in the end, Sanders had the last laugh.
She never got the softball treatment that the Obama communications team hacks got.
But she took on some of the most unpleasant “journalists” in the capital (April Ryan of CNN and American Urban Radio Networks leaps to mind) and proved herself one of the best — if not the best — presidential press secretaries in decades.
Liberal attacks against the Trump White House keep shattering – especially since the long-awaited report from special counsel Robert Mueller proved that Democrats’ accusations of “Russia collusion” by the 2016 Trump presidential campaign were as empty as Trump supporters always knew they were.
She even ended up dining with royalty — something her small-minded critics could never appreciate.
It’s tough to say whether Trump was being serious in his line about Sanders running for the chief executive spot in Little Rock. (Sanders’ father, Mike Huckabee, was governor of the Razorback State from 1996 to 2007.)
But one thing’s certain: Sanders made history in her time as the public face of the Trump administration.
If she wants to do it again in Arkansas — or anywhere else — she’s got the intelligence, the talent and toughness to succeed.
Faced constantly with a media monster that hated her because she was so effective at her job, she’s proven all that — especially the “tough” part — over and over and over again.
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