Young and Not Very Credible

 

Leavitt: Shame on you and shame on the media for trying to cover these individuals. This is a vicious gang. pic.twitter.com/KXqnpNxWCU

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 31, 2025

Karoline Leavitt responds to a reporter ABOUT an outrage--that the US government is sweeping up innocent individuals off the street and having them clapped into a hellhole, WITH outrage--HOW DARE YOU!

Easy! Because it's true and it's newsworthy. 

Much ado was made about Leavitt being the youngest press secretary for the White House, and I have to admit to rolling my eyes at that. It isn't an accomplishment when she was selected to be a cute shiny face to lie to people, and being too young, possibly immature, to understand what she needs to know or that "spinning" on behalf of a corrupt regime isn't merely a good paying job, but a moral excrescence. 

The journalists inquiring about due process aren't bleeding heart libs--they care about a thing called the rule of law. Leavitt's emotional misdirection has the benefit of seeming unaffected, because it may very well not be a sophisticated act from someone who should know better. She may be unaware that in small "l" small "d" liberal democracies, legal protections exist to protect the innocent. 

Of course, in TrumpWorld, it is a lot to imagine she would also care.  Her lack of credibility is just as bad as Spicer or Huckabee Sanders before her. 

TWGB: This Situation is not Hypothetical

 

In today's SCOTUS hearing, Samuel Alito argued that immunity for former presidents is good, actually, because without it, ex-presidents might refuse to leave office peacefully if they lose reelection...

Make it make sense. https://t.co/HepJVcgN2Q

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 25, 2024

If I were to take Justice Alito as a good-faith interrogator adhering to the actual facts of the Trump presidency--the actual president this case is about, and not some future generic president we're just having a classroom thought-experiment about, are we supposed to play along and imagine a path where 1/6 does not happen because Trump can rest safe in his bed at Mar-a-Lago certain that no ill shall befall him, because he had immunity. So, he just gracefully turns over the keys to the established firm:

And maybe that even means he is just fine keeping those documents from the White House that he doubtless acquired during his presidency--several boxes of, in fact--and selling them, because we are just going to assume a president does official things officially, and not shady-ass criminal stuff because one has always been a shady-ass criminal? 

On a day where Justice Brown-Jackson noted that immunity (or should we rather call it, impunity?) would turn the Oval Office into a center of criminal activity, we received testimony that Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were in contact--via their White House offices, with David Pecker regarding the election interference/hush money cover-up scheme. 

Biden Knocked 'em Dead in the Old SOTU

 

After Biden's claim that some Republicans want to end Medicare and Social Security provoked GOP anger, the president responds, "I'm glad to see it, I enjoy conversion."

"Social Security and its bookend, Medicare, are off the books now, right?," Biden adds. "We have unanimity!" pic.twitter.com/3aymKQlf1d

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 8, 2023

Now, after that, are the GOP feeling like they want to try to introduce something about so-called "entitlement" (paid-benefit) programs and be made liars? 

Joe Biden foxed them. He got them rolling. He just set up the ad against whenever they want to roll that idea out. He decided to go off message to use the GOP's contrary energy against them, like political aikido.  This is what Joe Biden does best--he gets people. His EQ is outstanding. And he knew how to bait the hook. 

Now you know: Democrats and the Biden Administration will protect your Social Security--and the GOP, not so much. But they might leave it alone for now. He also called out opposition to his infrastructure plan, saying he would meet his opponents at the ground breaking. Because you know goddamn right Republicans will vote against things and then take credit for them like butter would not melt in their mouths. 

And I don't care what nepo-baby Sarah Huckabee Sanders has to say in response, because she is going to pretend like the culture war fell on her, not like she and her inappropriate-length dresses fell on the culture war and like she maybe did not lie for a former president and therefore has no standing whatsoever to call out anyone else's supposed factual shortcomings. 

The story is, Democrats perform in office, and the GOP performs like a madhouse--incoherent and signifying their delusions. 

I have nothing better to say about what I saw. 

They Really Do Sound Like Him, Though

I'm posting a screencap (click to enbiggen) because she's bound to delete it after a long-enough period of roasting, but it really does appear that Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted an impression of a stutter during tonight's Democratic debate, and then, instead of apologizing when being called out for it, tried to explain that her critics are the dumb ones for not understanding that what she was saying was, Biden doesn't make himself understood very well.

Because she's a nasty piece of work, of course, which might have been part of her home training. But also because even though she isn't still Trump's press secretary, she still sounds just like him. A hurtful asshole, in other words.

Biden responded without calling her an asshole, which is better than me, I guess.

I’ve worked my whole life to overcome a stutter. And it’s my great honor to mentor kids who have experienced the same. It’s called empathy. Look it up. https://t.co/0kd0UJr9Rs

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 20, 2019

Although I feel like it's implied.

UPDATE: Huckabee has apologized as one does when literally everyone has basically called one an asshole. But I still feel like it was intentional and she probably had heard this about Biden before. She's not brand-new around here.

I actually didn’t know that about you and that is commendable. I apologize and should have made my point respectfully. https://t.co/fbmVAqDoWI

— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) December 20, 2019

UPDATE 2: Ah! Trump's kids sound like him, too.

Can't Say I'll Miss Her

It will be very hard to miss Sarah Sanders' White House press briefings, because towards the end of her tenure, she hardly bothered with them, but could it safely be said that I wouldn't miss Sarah Huckabee Sanders, herself?

Yes. Gosh, yes. 

I never jumped on Sanders with both feet the way I did with Sean Spicer, I guess because by the time she was WH Press Secretary, the constant untruth was just an accepted part of TrumpWorld. It wasn't that she lied any less or was any less of a bully from the podium. If anything, she was more disdainful of the press, showing in her interactions with them an attitude along the lines of "I went to the trouble of serving you up this steaming plate of lie, now shut up and chew."

But what would have been the point of sounding off on a person doing a job she seemed to hate? She admitted it was the "opportunity of a lifetime" and claimed to "love every minute of it", but it was also an opportunity to be frequently called a liar and be more offended by being called on it than by actually doing it. It was the opportunity to have to act out an adversarial role with the WH press corps for the benefit of one particular audience member, even that wasn't always the reality of the relationship. 

Also, if it was such a great gig, what's the rush? Some people might wonder if her effectiveness as a spokesperson for the President has been diminished after having been exposed as an admitted liar in the Mueller report. But that surely isn't it, as she seems to be leaving on her own terms (although someone like myself might notice the comment made by Chris Christie that Trump had been ill-served by whoever in his press office allowed the Laura Ingraham interview that made him look bad). Also, she apparently had been meaning to leave for the past year. 

So who knows what lies in store for Sarah Sanders? Eating safely in restaurants again? Running for office?  Screwing around listlesssly and then getting a spot on Trump's 2020 campaign?

Meh. We'll see.

Sarah Sanders Proudly Lies for Trump

Pressed repeatedly on her comments on FBI agents, Sarah Sanders tells @GStephanopoulos, "It was the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point. I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democratic Party" was about Mueller probe. https://t.co/mOQZNKl1wy pic.twitter.com/y3xcNwVYHg

— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2019

I noted a little bit earlier that Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies for Trump and sounds more like him all of the time. The Mueller report revealed that Sarah Sanders lied and admitted she did when she said that she had received messages from people in the FBI who were happy about the firing of Director Jim Comey. Her answer to being pinned down on that was less than great: it was 100% accurate that she got some messages to that effect, but it couldn't be considered "countless".


Yeah. Because whether the messages were "countless", and not whether they were happening at all, was the issue. I direct to others who were paying attention:

They All Start to Sound Like Trump

Democrats in Congress aren’t smart enough to understand the President’s tax returns and probably don’t even understand how to do their own... https://t.co/wooGn3jVp8

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) April 15, 2019

I was going to just overlook the nastiness of claiming that Democrats in Congress (in fact, she indicates in the clip, the current group of Democrats...as if there was something, I don't know, just very special, about them) because I thought maybe this was something she just threw out there in the course of an interview. But then I saw she put that up on her @PressSec Twitter feed.

So, she's officially calling congressional Democrats not "smart enough" to understand the president's tax returns. The folks who construct tax laws. Grown adults who can do a bit of readin' and figurin'. (Oh heck, I reckon if they got stuck, they could even look in a phone book and get an accountant or two on the case, you think?) It's not just insulting, it doesn't even work all that well as an insult, let alone as a reason for them not to review Trump's returns.

What a very good spokesperson for Trump she is though, echoing comments he has made about certain Democrats as "low IQ". It's ugly and unprofessional, but in exactly the way Trump is, too.

UPDATE: There are already ten accountants in Congress, anyway. But she wasn't trying to be factual. Her comments were about being nasty.

Hey Kids! Lookit the Wacky Fun Enemies List!

Whoo-hoo! That's quite a normal thing for a White House press secretary to put out on social media! See, it's all in good jokey fun. It creates the narrative that the media is full of lugenpresse and traitors, but in a way that is back-slapping and relatable. In other news, Trump's campaign is trying to blacklist his critics from news programs, which is a slightly less jokey way of playing the same game, you guys! What a neat coordination of messages!

Ha, Teamwork makes the dream work, right?

What The Hell are You Doing? 3: CoNsErvAtIsM Edition

Reporter: Has the President ever denounced Steve King?

Sanders: He denounced him to me privately. pic.twitter.com/B5gq1bmX2q

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 11, 2019

I know Sarah Huckabee Sanders hates her job the way I hate touching the little wet bits of plate scrapings that end up stuck in the sink strainer when I do dishes. She doesn't address the press very much, and when she does, it seems a little hostile and she's pretty quick to say a lie. The above exchange isn't exactly a lie, though--it's just a deflection. But whew! Denouncing someone privately to a person whose job is to relay your message (and maybe try and make you look not-terrible) is not actually a "denunciation". An actual denunciation would be saying Steve King is a racist and what he says is not acceptable, right out loud where the people can hear. What Trump would have done if he privately let on to his press secretary that he would just rather Steve King not be so icky and embarrassing and whatnot, is a complaint. It's a wholly different, and in this case, less honorable tactic called "having it both ways". Trump would like to keep his racist cake and eat it, too.

The dishonesty of this barely touches the "infanticide" claim, though--which was made by several Republicans at CPAC and has now been repeated more than once by Sanders. (She also played about with the idea that Democrats hate Jews, which is also inflammatory and astounding.)

I do not know if the lies are the part of the job she hates, or if facing the press is the part of the job she hates, but I genuinely believe she could, if she cared to tell the truth, just do so and be fired, or fucking quit and see if someone else will let her lie to people who might not ask her annoying questions, as actual journalists do. Maybe she could teach a course in doublespeak at Liberty University or something. She just seems so unhappy, and I'm close to thinking she really damn well ought to be.

The White House Porter Timeline Wasn't Right

FBI Director Wray on Rob Porter background check:

• Submitted partial report in March
• Completed background investigation in late July
• Received request for follow up, provided info in Nov.
• Closed the file in Jan. 
• Received and passed on new info earlier this month pic.twitter.com/ucNcgge4vz

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 13, 2018

Because I am at the point where I just disregard anything Sarah Huckabee Sanders says because she is as bad a liar as Sean Spicer ever was and possibly even shows more contempt for the truth and for the media, and for the public that she, the media and the truth should serve, I am going to just accept that the timeline given by Trump's appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray indicates that key White House staff should have known this Porter fellow wasn't going to get that solid clearance, and was in fact, a perpetual liability as a serial woman-beater. People knew this, and they did not mind. One take is that they did not care because this White House is steeped in misogyny, which is the point I took up last time I visited the idea. But another, also ghastly point, is that Rob Porter, for all his obvious flaws, was competent enough to serve, in a White House staffing crisis where that particular grace did not befall all potential applicants.

This points to, what was also described today, as a White House clearance system that is broken. Sanders points to the internal White House personnel security office. I surely bet office politics has embargoed their free and open response to her throwing them under the bus. But I suspect the career folks that staff that office have a particularly rugged backstory to relate regarding clearing anybody from Jared Kushner on down.  This White House does not have the best people. This is a particular process barrier to letting them do shit, because the system is rigged to prevent grifters, posers and security threats from participating. This was set up not to be unfair to weirdo outsider dark horse sonsofbitches that Trumpists want to romanticize Trump et als as, but to actually not have grossly unfit and potentially dangerous people handling top level clearance intelligence. Because it is specifically harmful to national security to have randos who have proved themselves to be unaccountable suddenly be accounting for matters of state.

The Trump Administration can't get the best people, despite his boasting that he would. This is not an example of "deep state" fuckery. This is just the Trump Administration having shitty people in positions they can not be qualified for.

Sanders is a Better fit than Spicer Was

I know I gave former WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer some crap on this blog about being a liar for all seasons, but there were times I actually felt kind of bad for the guy because I thought he seemed to have a conscience. It didn't work properly, but he looked uncomfortable about some of the things he said--I figured he was kind of bad at his job, and the WH considered it a feature, not a bug. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on the other hand, is a kind of awful which is a much better fit with the overall tenor of the Trump Administration. She can suggest that a private company fire one of their employees over speech that the White House disagrees with, and also recommending that a former FBI Director, who will likely be producing testimony against her boss in an ongoing investigation, be persecuted, without looking like she feels even a bit bad about those things at all. 

It's a funny thing--in this country, we have freedom of speech and of the press, not lèse-majesté, as the Constitutional rule. It's very unusual for the Press Secretary to make a statement from the podium, speaking for the White House, to recommend any private company fire someone for their speech. The allegation that Trump is a white supremacist isn't rare or all that new, and it was announced that same day that President Trump had a dialog with an African American Senator, Tim (not Tom) Scott over Trump's completely pitiful Charlottesville response.  (Trump himself had called former President Obama racist, in addition to insinuating that he was not a citizen. He seems to have a hang-up about whether black people are the real racists. I'm just saying--there could be a reason for that.)

It's also damn weird to have a Press Secretary recommend prosecution of someone via an interestingly not-entirely true position.  

It sort of looks like trying to intimidate people who might dime out Trump for any possible wrong-doing, which I'm not even sure is an advisable stance to take since the fall-out from the Comey firing in the first place was an obstruction of justice investigation. And I don't know if she just doesn't realize that her statements are kind of winding her up in that particular business, or what.

But she commits, you guys. She totally commits.