Sarah Huckabee Sanders Version of Covfefe

[Cartmann99]

37 minutes ago, JMarie said:

So Frank actually got invited to the White House to mow the lawn, after the school year already began.  He has his own business and aspires to be a Navy SEAL.  Barron, on the other hand, um, well, he... goes to school?

Barron's being trained to direct the help, not labor alongside them.

[Audrey2]

3 hours ago, JMarie said:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/09/15/11-year-old-mows-lawn-white-house-meets-president-trump/669760001/

So Frank actually got invited to the White House to mow the lawn, after the school year already began.  He has his own business and aspires to be a Navy SEAL.  Barron, on the other hand, um, well, he... goes to school?

I bet he'll get stiffed on his bill, too.

[Cartmann99]

I just had a thought about Frank mowing the lawn. What would have happened if Frank was injured while mowing? Was White House counsel consulted before inviting Frank and his father to the White House?

[GreyhoundFan]

An excellent op-ed about SFS: "Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s deeply disturbing prosecution from the briefing room"

Spoiler

During her news briefings this week, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has repeatedly suggested that former FBI director James B. Comey may have broken the law and should be investigated. On Monday, in response to a question about Stephen K. Bannon’s claim on “60 Minutes” that firing Comey was a huge political mistake, Sanders claimed the dismissal was appropriate in part because Comey had provided false testimony to Congress and had leaked confidential materials. On Tuesday, she argued that Comey’s actions “were improper, and likely could have been illegal” and were something federal prosecutors “should certainly look at.” She returned again to the charges on Wednesday, claiming it was “pretty clean and clear” that Comey broke the law.

To be clear, this “prosecution from the lectern” is not illegal. It’s probably a sign of the times that it doesn’t even seem particularly surprising. But it should be deeply disturbing.

The president, of course, is the head of the executive branch and the attorney general’s boss. But when it comes to criminal prosecution, there is a long-standing norm of Justice Department independence. Presidents typically don’t interfere with or comment on criminal investigations.

This norm is central to our commitment to the rule of law. It reduces the danger that criminal prosecution may be used for political ends. Presidents typically avoid even the appearance of using the justice system to punish political foes or help political allies. That’s banana-republic stuff — it’s not supposed to happen here.

To be sure, presidents slip up from time to time. President Barack Obama was widely criticized last year when he publicly opined, while the FBI investigation was still pending, that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server did not endanger national security. But President Trump has shown a unique disregard for the traditional independence of the justice system. During the campaign, he famously promised that if elected he would direct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton, his political opponent, and said that if he were president she would be in jail.

Since his election there have been other reports of the president seeking to influence criminal investigations. Before he fired Comey, Trump reportedly urged Comey to drop the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

More recently, the president reportedly asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether he could somehow stop the prosecution for criminal contempt of his political ally former sheriff Joe Arpaio. He ultimately allowed the case to proceed — only to pardon Arpaio once he was convicted.

Now the president’s spokesperson is publicly accusing the former FBI director of breaking the law. Although Sanders hedged her statements by noting it wasn’t the president’s job to tell prosecutors to investigate anyone, the message was clear. No one in the Justice Department from the attorney general on down could have any doubt about what the boss thinks should happen.

What makes this particular example even more troubling is that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III reportedly is investigating whether the president’s firing of Comey constituted obstruction of justice. So Sanders’s comments don’t merely reflect a breach of a usual norm. They are an attack on the character of a potential key witness against the president.

If prosecutors did something similar in a criminal case, the defense would accuse them of trying to taint the jury pool. Even if Comey is never investigated, the allegations of potential criminality seek to use the power of the chief executive to change the public narrative and cast doubts on Comey’s credibility.

The whole incident is yet another reminder of the fragility of political institutions governed by rules and traditions that historically have been honored voluntarily by both parties. What happens when someone comes to power who has no interest in upholding those traditions?

Sanders’s accusations from the lectern are simply one symptom of a much larger problem. Anyone who cares about the integrity of the criminal justice system has reason to be concerned by the behavior of this administration.

She needs to go on daddy's cruise and not come back.

[Cartmann99]

36 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

She needs to go on daddy's cruise and not come back.

Unfortunately, the All-American White Republican Patriot Jesus Family Bible Cruise™ isn't until next year. I think our best hope right now is that she gets tired of Trump and decides to go work on Huckabee's new television show. 

[GrumpyGran]

16 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I just had a thought about Frank mowing the lawn. What would have happened if Frank was injured while mowing? Was White House counsel consulted before inviting Frank and his father to the White House?

Such a bad idea. I blame this poor child's stupid parents for playing along with this sham. How long before we have a contest to see who gets to mow the White House lawn this week? Right up Dumpy's alley.

Screw liability, child labor laws, education, let's use children to polish our battered image.

Do you think SHS would let her children come mow the lawn? I bet not!

[Cartmann99]

5 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Such a bad idea. I blame this poor child's stupid parents for playing along with this sham. How long before we have a contest to see who gets to mow the White House lawn this week? Right up Dumpy's alley.

@GrumpyGran, why not just fire all of the folks who maintain the grounds,  do building maintenance, cafeteria staff, etc...., and just get some kids to volunteer every week? We'll probably lose a few here and there from the improper use of chemicals, five year olds falling off of ladders, and Bobby chasing Susie around with a chainsaw, but the children will learn the value of work and get the opportunity to buy MAGA merchandise at 10% off retail! 

Huckabee sure loved watching Frank work:

Uh, Mike? Have you met the leader of your party, Donald J. Trump? You know, that white elephant the American taxpayers are stuck footing the bills for? The timeshare we can't find a buyer for? Look at how much he's cost us compared to his predecessors at this point in their presidencies! 

[GreyhoundFan]

Frank's daddy works for the federal government. He wouldn't specify his political position, citing the Hatch Act, but it's pretty apparent from the comments he gave in this article.

Quote

...

Giaccio, who works for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel — an agency with oversight over federal employees, not to be confused with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election — declined to say who he supported in the race, citing the Hatch Act. But he said Frank, the oldest of four children, began supporting Trump early in the Republican primary debates.

Frank isn’t the only letter-writer in the family. “One of my younger kids wants to write NASA to get a trip to the moon,” Giaccio said.

Frank had previously written to President Barack Obama, Giaccio added, but only got a form letter in response.

...

And methinks the younger kid should hustle before the TT gets rid of NASA.

[GrumpyGran]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Frank's daddy works for the federal government. He wouldn't specify his political position, citing the Hatch Act, but it's pretty apparent from the comments he gave in this article.

And methinks the younger kid should hustle before the TT gets rid of NASA.

No surprise here. A plant child, wonder how long it took for Daddy to come forward and offer to help Frank write a letter to the President, so stupid Sanders could set up some PR opportunity. Yeah, Frank's Dad just happens to work for the government. 

Meanwhile a MILLION people voted illegally in New Hampshire!

[GreyhoundFan]

SMDH: "White House: It’s not Trump’s fault that his NFL tweets are a distraction. It’s the media’s."

Spoiler

President Trump devoted part of his appearance at a Friday night rally for Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) to cussing out NFL players who refuse to stand during the national anthem, then tweeted about the same subject more than a dozen times before his spokeswoman briefed reporters on Monday.

Yet when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took to the podium, she suggested it is the media's fault — not the president's — that a debate about athletes' protests suddenly overshadowed such matters as Hurricane Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico and Senate Republicans' efforts to pass a health-care bill.

How, asked Jon Decker of Fox News Radio, does Trump's opining on demonstrations by football players help advance his legislative agenda? The question led to this exchange:

SANDERS: It really doesn’t take that long to type out 140 characters, and this president’s very capable of doing more than one thing at a time and more than one thing in a day.

DECKER: But you see, Sarah, how it’s taken up so much oxygen, right? When the president speaks about that particular issue, you see how the majority of questions that have been asked of you so far today have been about this particular issue.

SANDERS: Well, that’s determined by you guys.

DECKER: He has a tremendous amount of power when he tweets. You know, we report on it. And, so, when he tweets something, it does take away from his legislative agenda. Would you not agree?

SANDERS: No, I don’t. Because I think it’s important for our president to show patriotism, to be a leader on this issue, and he has.

“That's determined by you guys.”

Technically, Sanders is right. Reporters could, in theory, have ignored the subject about which the president of the United States displayed the most interest over the previous three days.

That is, of course, a totally unreasonable expectation.

You have to hand it to the White House, though: This is a pretty neat trick. Let the president talk for days about demonstrations at NFL games, then claim the protests are the media's obsession when reporters ask lots of questions.

Sanders focused her opening remarks on tax policy and the 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine's integration of an Arkansas high school. She set the scene perfectly. The first question — from another Fox News reporter — was about Trump and the NFL.

What viewers saw was Trump's spokeswoman address an important pocketbook issue and a milestone moment in American history, only to have the media abruptly change the subject.

It was an entirely predictable sequence — and exactly what the White House would want.

She is ridiculous.

[GrumpyGran]

23 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

SMDH: "White House: It’s not Trump’s fault that his NFL tweets are a distraction. It’s the media’s."

  Hide contents

President Trump devoted part of his appearance at a Friday night rally for Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) to cussing out NFL players who refuse to stand during the national anthem, then tweeted about the same subject more than a dozen times before his spokeswoman briefed reporters on Monday.

Yet when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took to the podium, she suggested it is the media's fault — not the president's — that a debate about athletes' protests suddenly overshadowed such matters as Hurricane Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico and Senate Republicans' efforts to pass a health-care bill.

How, asked Jon Decker of Fox News Radio, does Trump's opining on demonstrations by football players help advance his legislative agenda? The question led to this exchange:

SANDERS: It really doesn’t take that long to type out 140 characters, and this president’s very capable of doing more than one thing at a time and more than one thing in a day.

DECKER: But you see, Sarah, how it’s taken up so much oxygen, right? When the president speaks about that particular issue, you see how the majority of questions that have been asked of you so far today have been about this particular issue.

SANDERS: Well, that’s determined by you guys.

DECKER: He has a tremendous amount of power when he tweets. You know, we report on it. And, so, when he tweets something, it does take away from his legislative agenda. Would you not agree?

SANDERS: No, I don’t. Because I think it’s important for our president to show patriotism, to be a leader on this issue, and he has.

“That's determined by you guys.”

Technically, Sanders is right. Reporters could, in theory, have ignored the subject about which the president of the United States displayed the most interest over the previous three days.

That is, of course, a totally unreasonable expectation.

You have to hand it to the White House, though: This is a pretty neat trick. Let the president talk for days about demonstrations at NFL games, then claim the protests are the media's obsession when reporters ask lots of questions.

Sanders focused her opening remarks on tax policy and the 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine's integration of an Arkansas high school. She set the scene perfectly. The first question — from another Fox News reporter — was about Trump and the NFL.

What viewers saw was Trump's spokeswoman address an important pocketbook issue and a milestone moment in American history, only to have the media abruptly change the subject.

It was an entirely predictable sequence — and exactly what the White House would want.

She is ridiculous.

It would be interesting if the reporters at her press briefings would turn the tables on her. I'm sure she would not have been prepared for specific questions regarding the tax policy and Trump's feelings about the Little Rock anniversary. Something along the lines of does he plan to make a statement regarding the anniversary. You know she wouldn't be able to come up with anything.

[Howl]

28 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

It would be interesting if the reporters at her press briefings would turn the tables on her. I'm sure she would not have been prepared for specific questions regarding the tax policy and Trump's feelings about the Little Rock anniversary. Something along the lines of does he plan to make a statement regarding the anniversary. You know she wouldn't be able to come up with anything.

She's from Arkansas and her dad was the governor , so she's likely familiar with the date. She'd probably respond that Trump's entire presidency is a statement celebrating the Little Rock desegregation anniversary, because, DUH!, MAGA!  

Dour is the best single word I can come up with to describe this utterly humorous woman. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sarah Huckabee Sanders piles more falsehoods on top of Trump’s bogus Thad Cochran claim"

Spoiler

Faced with an indefensibly wrong claim made by her boss about the GOP’s health-care effort, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday decided to try to defend it . . . using more blatant falsehoods.

Trump said no fewer than six times Wednesday that the Cassidy-Graham bill had the votes but that the Senate couldn’t vote on it because a senator was hospitalized: Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). The problem was that Cochran said he wasn’t hospitalized — he was recuperating from a urological issue at home in Mississippi — and, even if he were available, the GOP clearly didn’t have the votes to pass the bill by Friday’s deadline.

Asked to reconcile all of that on Thursday, Sanders doubled down on and then multiplied the bogus claims.

“Our understanding is that the senator was physically unable to be here this week to actually participate in the vote,” Sanders said.

She added of Trump’s claims that leaders had the votes to pass the bill: “The point . . . is we have the votes on the substance, just not necessarily on the process.”

Wrong and wrong.

A person close to Cochran confirmed to The Washington Post that “provisions have been in place this week for Senator Cochran to return to the capital if needed.”

As for having the votes on the “substance” but not the “process”? That’s some amazing spin. Sanders apparently means that senators opposed the bill because it wasn’t given a full Senate airing with committee hearings and CBO scores, etc., but otherwise would have voted for it. Some — most notably Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — have indeed been critical of the lack of what’s known as “regular order.”

But, first of all, Trump said repeatedly that they had the votes to pass the bill. Having the votes on the substance but not the process means the bill wouldn’t pass by Friday, the deadline for doing so with just 50 votes. It makes no sense as an explanation for Trump’s comments, because Trump was arguing that the bill would otherwise pass. Trump said, “We have the votes to get it done,” and “On health care, we have the votes for health care.”

And secondly, Sanders isn’t even right. The first three senators to come out against the bill — Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and McCain — all declined to endorse the substance of the bill. Paul said it was too close to Obamacare. Collins said it was “as deeply flawed as the previous iterations.” And McCain, who had those process issues, said he “would consider supporting legislation similar to that offered by my friends Senators Graham and Cassidy” if his process concerns were addressed.

But “would consider” is not a yes vote, and that means at least three GOP senators were not on board with the substance of the bill — dropping it below the 50-vote threshold. The White House is either making things up or is totally clueless.

Actually, the WH is both totally clueless AND making things up.

[Howl]

On 9/27/2017 at 9:21 AM, Howl said:

Dour is the best single word I can come up with to describe this utterly humorous humorless woman. 

Eeeeeek! Huge typo!  Corrected! 

[GrumpyGran]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Sarah Huckabee Sanders piles more falsehoods on top of Trump’s bogus Thad Cochran claim"

  Reveal hidden contents

Faced with an indefensibly wrong claim made by her boss about the GOP’s health-care effort, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday decided to try to defend it . . . using more blatant falsehoods.

Trump said no fewer than six times Wednesday that the Cassidy-Graham bill had the votes but that the Senate couldn’t vote on it because a senator was hospitalized: Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). The problem was that Cochran said he wasn’t hospitalized — he was recuperating from a urological issue at home in Mississippi — and, even if he were available, the GOP clearly didn’t have the votes to pass the bill by Friday’s deadline.

Asked to reconcile all of that on Thursday, Sanders doubled down on and then multiplied the bogus claims.

“Our understanding is that the senator was physically unable to be here this week to actually participate in the vote,” Sanders said.

She added of Trump’s claims that leaders had the votes to pass the bill: “The point . . . is we have the votes on the substance, just not necessarily on the process.”

Wrong and wrong.

A person close to Cochran confirmed to The Washington Post that “provisions have been in place this week for Senator Cochran to return to the capital if needed.”

As for having the votes on the “substance” but not the “process”? That’s some amazing spin. Sanders apparently means that senators opposed the bill because it wasn’t given a full Senate airing with committee hearings and CBO scores, etc., but otherwise would have voted for it. Some — most notably Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — have indeed been critical of the lack of what’s known as “regular order.”

But, first of all, Trump said repeatedly that they had the votes to pass the bill. Having the votes on the substance but not the process means the bill wouldn’t pass by Friday, the deadline for doing so with just 50 votes. It makes no sense as an explanation for Trump’s comments, because Trump was arguing that the bill would otherwise pass. Trump said, “We have the votes to get it done,” and “On health care, we have the votes for health care.”

And secondly, Sanders isn’t even right. The first three senators to come out against the bill — Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and McCain — all declined to endorse the substance of the bill. Paul said it was too close to Obamacare. Collins said it was “as deeply flawed as the previous iterations.” And McCain, who had those process issues, said he “would consider supporting legislation similar to that offered by my friends Senators Graham and Cassidy” if his process concerns were addressed.

But “would consider” is not a yes vote, and that means at least three GOP senators were not on board with the substance of the bill — dropping it below the 50-vote threshold. The White House is either making things up or is totally clueless.

Actually, the WH is both totally clueless AND making things up.

SHS: "No, you're wrong. I have the brains, I'm just not using them. Let's read a letter from Lucy in Des Moines who would like to come and polish the furniture in the White House. I think we're going to be able to arrange that."

[GreyhoundFan]

Fuck you, SHS: "White House: Now is not the time to talk about gun control. But ‘if you look to Chicago …’"

Spoiler

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday repeatedly deflected reporters’ questions about gun control, saying “there will certainly be a time for that policy discussion to take place, but that’s not the place that we’re in at this moment.”

During the same media briefing, however, Sanders weighed in on the exact “policy discussion” that she said the White House would not engage in on “a day of mourning.”

“I think one of the things that we don’t want to do is try to create laws that won’t create — or stop these types of things from happening,” Sanders said. “I think if you look to Chicago, where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country. That certainly hasn’t helped there. So, I think we have to, when that time comes for those conversations to take place, then I think we have to look at things that may actually have a real impact.”

This is the White House not talking about gun control.

As fact checkers have consistently pointed out, the claim that Chicago has “the strictest gun laws in the country” — one that Trump himself used in a presidential debate last fall — is outdated and has not been true since 2013. It is true, however, that the city’s gun-control regulations remain among the strictest in the nation, yet there were 4,368 shooting victims in Chicago last year, and there have been 2,877 this year.

Later, Sanders responded to Hillary Clinton’s suggestion that a House bill that would ease restrictions on gun silencers could make attacks like the one Stephen Paddock carried out in Las Vegas even more deadly by dampening an audible cue that alerts potential targets.

...

“I haven’t spoken with the president about that specific issue, but I don’t think that that is something that would have changed” the outcome, Sanders said. (An expert The Washington Post’s Philip Bump consulted suggests Sanders is probably right on this point.)

“Again, I think before we start trying to talk about the preventions of what took place last night we need to know more facts,” Sanders continued. “And right now, we’re simply not at that point. It’s very easy for Mrs. Clinton to criticize and to come out, but I think we need to remember the only person with blood on their hands is that of the shooter.”

During the briefing, NBC’s Hallie Jackson noted that “after the Orlando shooting, the president that day was out on Twitter talking about policy; he was talking about his travel ban.”

Jackson was right: It is hard for the White House to say the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting is not the time to talk about policy because of the precedent set by Trump.

Apparently it also is hard for Trump’s team to resist talking about policy, even when it insists that “today is a day for consoling the survivors and mourning those we lost.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with Sanders stating the president’s positions on gun control. Democrats are certainly declaring their own. But the idea that the White House refuses to discuss the issue so soon after tragedy does not match reality.

She needs to just shut up and go away.

[GrumpyGran]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“Again, I think before we start trying to talk about the preventions of what took place last night we need to know more facts,”

Waiting for the NRA to give us the talking points. Diffusing, distracting, and denying with her unique word salad style. Fine-tuning double and triple negatives. Maybe creating this kind of verbal mess is harder than we think.

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Sarah Huckabee Sanders sees the world"

Spoiler

This is the world as seen through the eyes of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

As a girl, she watched her father, Southern Baptist pastor-turned-GOP-governor Mike Huckabee, sidelined constantly. Arkansas Democrats literally nailed his office door shut.

In the years after, she saw conservative Christians — like her family, like most everyone she knew — ridiculed in American pop culture.

As a young woman, she moved to Washington for a government job, and noticed right away that people in the nation’s capital care more about your job than who you are. “Certainly not like where I’m from,” she says.

Sanders described this perpetual interloper experience from her other world: an elegant, well-appointed office at the White House, where reporters from places such as the New York Times and CNN metaphorically prostrate themselves at her door day in and out, where she can push aside her curtain to see the president’s helicopter land, and from where she can receive guidance on the phone every day from her father, long a political darling of conservative Christians, a TV celebrity now worth millions.

As the public face of the U.S. president, Sanders is a fitting symbol for her fellow religious conservatives, who are both insider and outsider, powerful and powerless.

Religious conservatives “aren’t outsiders in this White House, but generally speaking, they are,” the 35-year-old said recently in an interview in her West Wing office.

Sanders’s podium persona is all business, even a bit short at times. She so often says she doesn’t know the answer to a question or will have to get back to the questioner that it has become a critics’ meme. “Saturday Night Live” featured a spoof of her on its season opener last weekend, with faux Sanders telling President Trump that her success lies in the fact that “I’m no-nonsense, but I’m all nonsense.”

One on one, however, she comes across as relaxed and open, even when she’s on the offense.

“If someone says something about another faith, particularly liberals come to their defense in a raging motion, but if someone attacks a Christian, it’s perfectly fine. At some point we became a culture that said that was okay.”

For many conservative Christians, defending their faith is now tied tightly to defending Trump. For Sanders, that meant becoming a headline herself the day before this interview after she told reporters during a briefing that an ESPN host who called Trump a “white supremacist” should be fired. The comment about Jemele Hill set off an immediate firestorm.

To prepare for that briefing, Sanders that day had opened her leather-bound daily devotional, as she always does before heading out to the podium. The one she uses is the best-selling “Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence.”

In her office, she read this to herself: “Come to me and rest. Give your mind a rest from its habitual judging.”

Facing judgment is part of being Sarah Huckabee Sanders, perhaps the most visible evangelical in U.S. political life (aside from Mike Pence, but Sanders is on the news every day). But unlike her father, Sanders never intended to be the face of anything; until a few months ago, she was known as a behind-the-scenes talented political organizer.

Since she assumed the job of press secretary in July, Sanders has triggered discussions about, among other things, the place of religious conservative women in power politics (she’s the first mom in that job, and just the third woman), and whether her presence helps or hurts the evangelical witness.

Rick Tyler, a conservative Christian strategist who served as spokesman for Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz, is one of several leading GOP operatives who worry about the White House’s approach to evangelicals. He thinks the much-covered Trump evangelical advisory board — the only faith group with regular access these days to the White House — is made up mostly of outliers, people with no real constituencies who can’t move votes. A common analysis is that the power in the GOP now rests with libertarian and tea party types.

“In terms of political power, [Christian conservatives] don’t have any. I think Sarah gets that,” said Tyler, long an outspoken Trump critic. “The ethical challenges of her job are amazing. . . . The consistent falsehoods, lies [from Trump] are unbelievable.”

Evangelicals have been deeply divided in recent months over issues including Trump’s threat to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth and his comments that there were “two sides” to a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

Although some say the Trump-evangelical alliance harms Christianity, it’s common to hear other conservative Christians say that Trump’s unexpected win — down to the electoral college — shows that God had a more-deliberate-than-usual hand, and has put Trump there for some reason.

Brian Kaylor, a Baptist pastor with a PhD in political communications who has written several books about religion and politics, thinks Sanders holds this view of a divine plan and it gives her confidence at the podium.

“When you have to stand up there and defend whatever he’s done, it’s more than you are defending a politician, or even a president; you are defending God’s chosen leader for this time,” he said of Trump’s defenders.

Sanders doesn’t talk about God publicly often — not nearly as much as Trump does these days. People who worked with her on campaigns say she’d say a pre-event prayer but otherwise was focused on things such as voter strategy. Her faith life mirrors younger evangelicals with their move away from denominations.

Although she identifies as a Southern Baptist — the biggest, and among the most conservative U.S. affiliations — the past few churches she has attended are more mainstream evangelical. Her husband is not only a Catholic, but their three children were baptized as infants, a rite mandatory for Catholics and some other Christians but long considered deviant to traditional Southern Baptists, who believe baptism should be reserved for people who have decided on their own to accept Christ.

A family friend describes Sanders and her husband, Bryan Sanders, as “progressive Christians.” In a compromise, they go to evangelical and Catholic churches every Sunday.

To many religious conservatives, Sanders is a source of enormous pride. The presence of someone from her background representing the president every day — not to mention the multiple other conservative Christians in Trump’s Cabinet — has huge symbolic weight, whether or not she has influence or even much contact with him and seems to often learn of his controversial tweets at the same time the public does.

David Brody, chief political correspondent for the Christian network CBN, said that when Sanders comes on the network’s pro-Trump talk show, “the social media director said he has never seen so many emoji hearts. . . . She has a charm about her. She’s feisty but in a bless-your-heart sort of way.”

Brody said his viewers were wowed by a briefing over the summer, when Sanders was asked whether Trump brought low the office of the president by tweeting a crack about television host Mika Brzezinski, whom he called “low IQ, crazy” and whom he said he saw “bleeding badly from a face lift.”

“Are you going to tell your kids this behavior is okay?” a reporter asked.

“As a person of faith, I think we all have one perfect role model. And when I’m asked that question, I point to God. I point to my faith. And that’s where I always tell my kids to look.”

Brody raved.

“I don’t remember that coming from Republicans, Democrats — that’s pretty bold in the context of a White House briefing,” he said.

Some religious conservatives say one of Sanders’s best attributes is that she isn’t Sean Spicer. They just want someone at the podium who can defend Trump somewhat effectively without becoming the story.

Sanders has a leg up perhaps, as politics is her family business.

While Mike Huckabee began his political career literally locked out, he eventually became a popular leader in Arkansas known as a compassionate conservative willing to work across partisan barriers to solve problems.

He later won the Iowa straw poll for president in 2008 and went on to host a long-running, popular show on Fox News Channel.

Huckabee said that his daughter, the youngest of three children, was always drawn to politics and that there are tales of her as a teenager sorting through voter and polling data in the living room.

Rick Caldwell, a longtime family friend, said Sanders’s parents demanded that their children get involved.

“Her dad always said, ‘Everyone wants to eat off a clean plate, but not everyone is willing to wash the dishes,’ ” Caldwell said. “If you want a better government, someone has to be willing to engage.”

After college, Sanders moved to Washington, where she worked in legislative affairs for the Bush administration’s Education Department. At the time, she thought she’d never leave.

“I had no intentions of going back,” she said, but did in 2006 to help her father start a PAC in Little Rock. Sanders was considered an especially gifted young organizer and given important jobs on not only her father’s campaign but other national ones, including that of Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Tim Pawlenty’s run for president in 2011.

Multiple people who worked on campaigns with Sanders praised her technical abilities — her ability to juggle a lot at once (including on understaffed campaigns), her high energy, her thoughtful management of grass-roots organizing, her political instincts on what makes one candidate appealing rather than another. Few could recall her policy priorities or views.

That love-hate thing with D.C. is a core part of conservative evangelicals’ focus on politics. There has been, in her lifetime in particular, a feeling among such Americans that politicians have broken promises to Christian conservatives. There is always a fear of being used, of not being dealt with genuinely.

This belief may have brought Sanders and her father to Trump early — in early 2016, long before most well-known conservative Christian leaders.

In an interview, Huckabee said Trump’s perceived lack of pretense drew his daughter in.

“She can deal with the authenticity of people who are not like her. One thing she’d not be comfortable with are people who behave one way in front of faith people and another with secular people. Someone who pretends to be a faith person but isn’t.” Trump, he said, is authentic, a highly prized characteristic.

Asked by the New York Times earlier this fall what drew her to Trump, Sanders was quick to answer : “I thought he could win.”

When asked to untangle conservative Christian views about Trump, Sanders said she thought the appeal was pretty basic: the appointment of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and his efforts on abortion and religious freedom for conservatives.

“Some things are black and white, and some aren’t. Some are simple right and wrong questions of morality. Tax reform isn’t necessarily a question of morality. For me, the life issue is a question of morality. Those aren’t the same for me,” she said in her office.

When she was appointed, many antiabortion leaders from big groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List and Concerned Women for America celebrated — even as evangelicals in the heartland would be likely to raise eyebrows about a mother of young children taking such a high-powered, round-the-clock job.

Dianne Bystrom, director of a center on women and politics at Iowa State University, said GOP women just started embracing motherhood in politics in the past couple of years.

“It used to be no one campaigned on being a mom, because if you were a mom, why aren’t you taking care of your kids? But [in the past few years] being a mom is being turned into an advantage.”

It looks more nuanced to Anthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania who writes about women and Christianity. To Butler, Sanders is “the classical evangelical woman,” someone who has worked for men “and knows how she is supposed to behave as a support to men in power. She must back them at all costs, and not appear to disagree in public. . . . I’m not saying you should discount her for what she has done, but if you look at her life, she has been at the seat of political evangelical power for a long time. She knows what’s up.”

It’s true that Sanders, despite her self-described outsider status, has been in an elite position of influence her entire life. But never in one that comes with a West Wing office. The question is: When the Trump years are over, what will she do? What effect will all of this have on her career?

Right now she is not focusing that far ahead. Instead, she said in her office, what she wants most is to be a good role model for her kids.

“It’s amazing how much things change when you realize people are really closely watching what you’re doing and following every move you make, “ she said. “I want to make sure I’m teaching them the right thing, it encourages you to be a better person,” she said of her children.

And what does she think about the fact that her children are watching her serve Trump?

Sanders smiled.

“Here I am.”

Jiminy, she is delusional.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"How Sarah Huckabee Sanders sees the world"

  Reveal hidden contents

This is the world as seen through the eyes of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

As a girl, she watched her father, Southern Baptist pastor-turned-GOP-governor Mike Huckabee, sidelined constantly. Arkansas Democrats literally nailed his office door shut.

In the years after, she saw conservative Christians — like her family, like most everyone she knew — ridiculed in American pop culture.

As a young woman, she moved to Washington for a government job, and noticed right away that people in the nation’s capital care more about your job than who you are. “Certainly not like where I’m from,” she says.

Sanders described this perpetual interloper experience from her other world: an elegant, well-appointed office at the White House, where reporters from places such as the New York Times and CNN metaphorically prostrate themselves at her door day in and out, where she can push aside her curtain to see the president’s helicopter land, and from where she can receive guidance on the phone every day from her father, long a political darling of conservative Christians, a TV celebrity now worth millions.

As the public face of the U.S. president, Sanders is a fitting symbol for her fellow religious conservatives, who are both insider and outsider, powerful and powerless.

Religious conservatives “aren’t outsiders in this White House, but generally speaking, they are,” the 35-year-old said recently in an interview in her West Wing office.

Sanders’s podium persona is all business, even a bit short at times. She so often says she doesn’t know the answer to a question or will have to get back to the questioner that it has become a critics’ meme. “Saturday Night Live” featured a spoof of her on its season opener last weekend, with faux Sanders telling President Trump that her success lies in the fact that “I’m no-nonsense, but I’m all nonsense.”

One on one, however, she comes across as relaxed and open, even when she’s on the offense.

“If someone says something about another faith, particularly liberals come to their defense in a raging motion, but if someone attacks a Christian, it’s perfectly fine. At some point we became a culture that said that was okay.”

For many conservative Christians, defending their faith is now tied tightly to defending Trump. For Sanders, that meant becoming a headline herself the day before this interview after she told reporters during a briefing that an ESPN host who called Trump a “white supremacist” should be fired. The comment about Jemele Hill set off an immediate firestorm.

To prepare for that briefing, Sanders that day had opened her leather-bound daily devotional, as she always does before heading out to the podium. The one she uses is the best-selling “Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence.”

In her office, she read this to herself: “Come to me and rest. Give your mind a rest from its habitual judging.”

Facing judgment is part of being Sarah Huckabee Sanders, perhaps the most visible evangelical in U.S. political life (aside from Mike Pence, but Sanders is on the news every day). But unlike her father, Sanders never intended to be the face of anything; until a few months ago, she was known as a behind-the-scenes talented political organizer.

Since she assumed the job of press secretary in July, Sanders has triggered discussions about, among other things, the place of religious conservative women in power politics (she’s the first mom in that job, and just the third woman), and whether her presence helps or hurts the evangelical witness.

Rick Tyler, a conservative Christian strategist who served as spokesman for Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz, is one of several leading GOP operatives who worry about the White House’s approach to evangelicals. He thinks the much-covered Trump evangelical advisory board — the only faith group with regular access these days to the White House — is made up mostly of outliers, people with no real constituencies who can’t move votes. A common analysis is that the power in the GOP now rests with libertarian and tea party types.

“In terms of political power, [Christian conservatives] don’t have any. I think Sarah gets that,” said Tyler, long an outspoken Trump critic. “The ethical challenges of her job are amazing. . . . The consistent falsehoods, lies [from Trump] are unbelievable.”

Evangelicals have been deeply divided in recent months over issues including Trump’s threat to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth and his comments that there were “two sides” to a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

Although some say the Trump-evangelical alliance harms Christianity, it’s common to hear other conservative Christians say that Trump’s unexpected win — down to the electoral college — shows that God had a more-deliberate-than-usual hand, and has put Trump there for some reason.

Brian Kaylor, a Baptist pastor with a PhD in political communications who has written several books about religion and politics, thinks Sanders holds this view of a divine plan and it gives her confidence at the podium.

“When you have to stand up there and defend whatever he’s done, it’s more than you are defending a politician, or even a president; you are defending God’s chosen leader for this time,” he said of Trump’s defenders.

Sanders doesn’t talk about God publicly often — not nearly as much as Trump does these days. People who worked with her on campaigns say she’d say a pre-event prayer but otherwise was focused on things such as voter strategy. Her faith life mirrors younger evangelicals with their move away from denominations.

Although she identifies as a Southern Baptist — the biggest, and among the most conservative U.S. affiliations — the past few churches she has attended are more mainstream evangelical. Her husband is not only a Catholic, but their three children were baptized as infants, a rite mandatory for Catholics and some other Christians but long considered deviant to traditional Southern Baptists, who believe baptism should be reserved for people who have decided on their own to accept Christ.

A family friend describes Sanders and her husband, Bryan Sanders, as “progressive Christians.” In a compromise, they go to evangelical and Catholic churches every Sunday.

To many religious conservatives, Sanders is a source of enormous pride. The presence of someone from her background representing the president every day — not to mention the multiple other conservative Christians in Trump’s Cabinet — has huge symbolic weight, whether or not she has influence or even much contact with him and seems to often learn of his controversial tweets at the same time the public does.

David Brody, chief political correspondent for the Christian network CBN, said that when Sanders comes on the network’s pro-Trump talk show, “the social media director said he has never seen so many emoji hearts. . . . She has a charm about her. She’s feisty but in a bless-your-heart sort of way.”

Brody said his viewers were wowed by a briefing over the summer, when Sanders was asked whether Trump brought low the office of the president by tweeting a crack about television host Mika Brzezinski, whom he called “low IQ, crazy” and whom he said he saw “bleeding badly from a face lift.”

“Are you going to tell your kids this behavior is okay?” a reporter asked.

“As a person of faith, I think we all have one perfect role model. And when I’m asked that question, I point to God. I point to my faith. And that’s where I always tell my kids to look.”

Brody raved.

“I don’t remember that coming from Republicans, Democrats — that’s pretty bold in the context of a White House briefing,” he said.

Some religious conservatives say one of Sanders’s best attributes is that she isn’t Sean Spicer. They just want someone at the podium who can defend Trump somewhat effectively without becoming the story.

Sanders has a leg up perhaps, as politics is her family business.

While Mike Huckabee began his political career literally locked out, he eventually became a popular leader in Arkansas known as a compassionate conservative willing to work across partisan barriers to solve problems.

He later won the Iowa straw poll for president in 2008 and went on to host a long-running, popular show on Fox News Channel.

Huckabee said that his daughter, the youngest of three children, was always drawn to politics and that there are tales of her as a teenager sorting through voter and polling data in the living room.

Rick Caldwell, a longtime family friend, said Sanders’s parents demanded that their children get involved.

“Her dad always said, ‘Everyone wants to eat off a clean plate, but not everyone is willing to wash the dishes,’ ” Caldwell said. “If you want a better government, someone has to be willing to engage.”

After college, Sanders moved to Washington, where she worked in legislative affairs for the Bush administration’s Education Department. At the time, she thought she’d never leave.

“I had no intentions of going back,” she said, but did in 2006 to help her father start a PAC in Little Rock. Sanders was considered an especially gifted young organizer and given important jobs on not only her father’s campaign but other national ones, including that of Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Tim Pawlenty’s run for president in 2011.

Multiple people who worked on campaigns with Sanders praised her technical abilities — her ability to juggle a lot at once (including on understaffed campaigns), her high energy, her thoughtful management of grass-roots organizing, her political instincts on what makes one candidate appealing rather than another. Few could recall her policy priorities or views.

That love-hate thing with D.C. is a core part of conservative evangelicals’ focus on politics. There has been, in her lifetime in particular, a feeling among such Americans that politicians have broken promises to Christian conservatives. There is always a fear of being used, of not being dealt with genuinely.

This belief may have brought Sanders and her father to Trump early — in early 2016, long before most well-known conservative Christian leaders.

In an interview, Huckabee said Trump’s perceived lack of pretense drew his daughter in.

“She can deal with the authenticity of people who are not like her. One thing she’d not be comfortable with are people who behave one way in front of faith people and another with secular people. Someone who pretends to be a faith person but isn’t.” Trump, he said, is authentic, a highly prized characteristic.

Asked by the New York Times earlier this fall what drew her to Trump, Sanders was quick to answer : “I thought he could win.”

When asked to untangle conservative Christian views about Trump, Sanders said she thought the appeal was pretty basic: the appointment of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and his efforts on abortion and religious freedom for conservatives.

“Some things are black and white, and some aren’t. Some are simple right and wrong questions of morality. Tax reform isn’t necessarily a question of morality. For me, the life issue is a question of morality. Those aren’t the same for me,” she said in her office.

When she was appointed, many antiabortion leaders from big groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List and Concerned Women for America celebrated — even as evangelicals in the heartland would be likely to raise eyebrows about a mother of young children taking such a high-powered, round-the-clock job.

Dianne Bystrom, director of a center on women and politics at Iowa State University, said GOP women just started embracing motherhood in politics in the past couple of years.

“It used to be no one campaigned on being a mom, because if you were a mom, why aren’t you taking care of your kids? But [in the past few years] being a mom is being turned into an advantage.”

It looks more nuanced to Anthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania who writes about women and Christianity. To Butler, Sanders is “the classical evangelical woman,” someone who has worked for men “and knows how she is supposed to behave as a support to men in power. She must back them at all costs, and not appear to disagree in public. . . . I’m not saying you should discount her for what she has done, but if you look at her life, she has been at the seat of political evangelical power for a long time. She knows what’s up.”

It’s true that Sanders, despite her self-described outsider status, has been in an elite position of influence her entire life. But never in one that comes with a West Wing office. The question is: When the Trump years are over, what will she do? What effect will all of this have on her career?

Right now she is not focusing that far ahead. Instead, she said in her office, what she wants most is to be a good role model for her kids.

“It’s amazing how much things change when you realize people are really closely watching what you’re doing and following every move you make, “ she said. “I want to make sure I’m teaching them the right thing, it encourages you to be a better person,” she said of her children.

And what does she think about the fact that her children are watching her serve Trump?

Sanders smiled.

“Here I am.”

Jiminy, she is delusional.

Wow. I have whiplash from reading that. I suppose I'm not surprised but I expected her to have a least one small valid motivation in all of this aside from the obvious Money&Power. She is an empty vessel. The fact that she clearly either mis-understood that daily devotional or intentionally re-purposed it in her head is a clue to how she moves through all this. If the words aren't to your liking, rearrange the words. And that's exactly what she does.

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

To Butler, Sanders is “the classical evangelical woman,” someone who has worked for men “and knows how she is supposed to behave as a support to men in power. She must back them at all costs, and not appear to disagree in public. . . . I’m not saying you should discount her for what she has done, but if you look at her life, she has been at the seat of political evangelical power for a long time. She knows what’s up.”

 In other words, Sarah knows her place in the patriarchy.

[GrumpyGran]

26 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

 In other words, Sarah knows her place in the patriarchy.

I don't know about that. She knows how to appear to know her place in public. But it seems in her private life, she's living on very equal terms with her spouse. They seem to have worked out a 'values' compromise that works for both of them. But that's their true religion. One with the motto of "It has to work for me."

[GrumpyGran]

Ok, she set me off, I don't really know why, except her ridiculous "All hat, no cattle" bullshit. She does know how ridiculous she sounded when she said that, right? Especially defending someone who fits that description perfectly.

So for her: All mouth, no content. And from here on she shall be referred to as Slanders.

[apple1]

This woman annoys the heck out of me.

She annoys me only very slightly less than does Trump. And that's saying a lot.

[47of74]

She is an awful person

Quote

The White House’s official position on the women who accused President Trump of sexual harassment is that they are lying, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders affirmed Friday.

“Yeah, we’ve been clear on that from the beginning and the president has spoken on it,” Sanders said.

Yeah, he's spoken on it Sarah - and showed he's OK with it.  Your boss, Sarah, is the one who said how he likes to grab women by their genitals. 

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

She is an awful person

Yeah, he's spoken on it Sarah - and showed he's OK with it.  Your boss, Sarah, is the one who said how he likes to grab women by their genitals. 

Well, she is very familiar with lying. Maybe she just assumes everybody lies all the time, just like her.