For more than two years I had been in President Trump’s inner circle in the White House. I didn’t just love my job, I loved the president and most of the people I worked with. As White House press secretary I had the opportunity to develop good relationships not only with the president and senior White House staff but also with the president’s family, his cabinet, campaign staff, and members of Congress. Walking away from so many friends was one of the hardest parts about leaving, so when more than two hundred people showed up at my going-away party it was a real affirmation. Many departures from the Trump administration weren’t so positive, much less given a celebratory send-off. It was meaningful to me that so many of my friends and colleagues had turned out. Ivanka and Jared, along with a few others, including Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Liddell and his wife, Renee, and Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp and her husband, Matt, cohosted the party at the Trump Hotel in one of the private rooms. Friends and former colleagues from White House press and comms including Sean Spicer, Bill Shine, Raj Shah, Lindsay Walters, Jessica Ditto, Hogan Gidley, Judd Deere, Julia Hahn, Alyssa Farah, Tony Sayegh, and Stephanie Grisham were there, along with current senior staff Larry Kudlow, Stephen Miller, Pat Cipollone, Marc Short, Derek Lyons, Julie Radford, and Kellyanne Conway, among others. Cabinet secretaries including Rick Perry, Linda McMahon, Wilbur Ross, Sonny Perdue, Alex Azar, Elaine Chao, Ben Carson, and Robert Wilkie also came, as did House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and US senator John Boozman, whose first campaign I had managed in Arkansas. Future White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany joined us as well, as did Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who came down from New York. It was an honor and quite the surprise when President Trump walked in, offered a toast, and as usual stole the show.
Just a few days later the president and his team were scheduled to leave for Osaka, Japan, for the G20. I went to the Oval just before the president’s departure to say good-bye one last time. The vice president was there, too. I said thank you to the president and gave him a hug. As the president was walking out the door to the South Lawn to board Marine One, he said, “It’s not too late. You can still come with us!” But we both knew it was too late. The news had been announced, my replacement chosen, and my kids were too excited to have their mom back to change my mind now. I stood in the door to the Oval as I watched him walk away. The walk back to my office was lonelier than any I had made before. I had been told that when the president leaves the country the West Wing is eerily quiet, but this was the first time I had experienced it myself. I went to my office and looked around, trying to soak it all in just one last time. Thinking about the moments we had fought, laughed, cried, hugged, and cheered together, and hoping I’d never forget any of it.
I hadn’t packed up my office yet. I had planned to do some that afternoon and the rest the next day—my last. I enlisted my friend Lindsay Walters, my very type A deputy who had left only a couple months before I did, to come back and help me pack everything from the place I had spent more time over the last two and a half years in than any other, including my home in Arlington. It was a good thing I had Lindsay because without her I am pretty sure some of my stuff would have never made it back to Arkansas. My friends Sarah Flaherty, Jessica Ditto, and Julie Radford came to help as well. Julie and her husband, Wynn, had become close friends during my time in the administration. Later, Bryan arrived to load everything into our GMC Yukon for the drive home.
It was already summer and the kids were out of school but Heather and Michael Giroux, our pastors at the church we attended in Washington, DC, had volunteered to watch them. We had fallen in love with Citizen Heights church and gotten close to Michael and Heather over many long dinners and were very sad to leave them and the church behind. We were glad to know our kids were in good hands as they had four boys of their own and had seen it all. As we finished up, my friends left, and it was just Bryan and me in my empty office. I sat at my desk and followed the tradition of leaving a note behind for my successor, Stephanie Grisham. I tried to sum up on a notecard a job that had changed my life and what I learned that might be helpful to her. In addition to the letter, I left her a copy of Jesus Calling, the daily devotional book that had brought me peace and given me confidence to face the challenges of the job every day. I tucked it in the top drawer where Spicer had left a note and a challenge coin for me. I also wrote a note to Hogan, who had been my principal deputy for about a year and was more like family than a colleague. We had first met when we worked for my dad during his reelection campaign for governor back in 2002 and had worked together on many campaigns since, but nothing had made us closer than our time in the White House. I knew it would be very different for him with me gone and I wanted him to know how much I valued his friendship. I had written a similar note to Raj when he left after serving as my first principal deputy. Raj and Hogan had been there to lead the team when I couldn’t, tell me things no one else wanted to, or let me yell at them in frustration and still be there when things calmed down. I dropped the note on Hogan’s desk, turned off the lights, and took a final look around my office. I closed the door and walked down the same stairs to the West Executive Exit that I had walked in almost exactly two and a half years ago to start this wild adventure. Bryan and I got in the car and rolled the windows down. I waved to the Secret Service agents at the gate, and we drove out. As it closed behind us it felt like more than just a gate closing but the end of one of the most consequential times in our lives.
We didn’t know what was next. I didn’t have a job lined up or a plan other than returning home to Arkansas with my family. We wasted no time leaving Washington, and were on the road the next morning, never looking back. We had packed only what clothes and other essentials we would need for the next few weeks and to this day our kids haven’t been back to Washington. Before going home to Arkansas, we stopped at my parents’ house in Florida where we spent a few weeks decompressing in the sunshine before the kids started school. It was quite the transition to go from the center of the political universe in the West Wing to sitting on the beach with my family. I didn’t even know how tired my mind and body were until I slowed down. I had been running on pure adrenaline for years, and it was like being hit by a semitruck. I went from every major reporter in the country and people at the highest levels of government, including the leader of the Free World, needing me and calling me every day to ordering school supplies and uniforms and decorating our new home. It was a shock to the system but every time I sat around the dinner table with my family or tucked my kids into bed and was present in the moment with them—not worried about rushing off to deal with the next crisis—I knew I was where I needed to be.
After settling into our new home in Little Rock and getting our kids enrolled in their new school, I signed contracts to be a Fox News contributor and with a speaker’s bureau, and was appointed by President Trump to the Fulbright Board, established by the late US senator J. William Fulbright, from my home state of Arkansas. I started doing more campaign events with President Trump and Vice President Pence around the country and for Republican candidates and organizations in Arkansas. I also started writing this book.
That fall I was in Louisiana for an alligator hunt hosted by Jeff Landry, the state’s attorney general. After I battled and killed my first-ever alligator, I was sitting around the campfire listening to my friend and fellow Arkansan Tracey Lawrence lead us in singing “Paint Me a Birmingham” when I saw a familiar number pop up on the screen of my phone. I walked to my cabin and answered.
“White House Operator, are you available for a call from the president?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
“My Sarah! Where are you? What are you doing? Are you governor yet?”
“Not yet, sir. I am actually writing a book. I think you will like it. You have been falsely attacked and misrepresented for too long and it’s time for America to know the real story.”
“Can’t wait. I’m sure it will be great,” said the president.
Just a few weeks later the Democrats began their push to impeach President Trump. The Democrats’ Russia witch hunt had failed, so they needed to manufacture a new scandal to take down the president. The Trump administration had asked Ukraine to investigate corruption, including why Joe Biden’s son was paid millions of dollars to serve on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma despite having no relevant experience to do so. Hunter Biden had been given the board seat and millions in compensation because his dad was the vice president and in charge of Ukraine policy for the Obama administration. And to make matters worse, Vice President Biden had called for the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma, a clear conflict of interest. The US government was spending hundreds of millions of dollars on aid to Ukraine, and President Trump had every right to demand transparency and accountability from the Ukrainian government.
The Democrats and their liberal allies in the media didn’t see it that way, but I couldn’t believe they would be so stupid to make the same mistake again. The Russia witch hunt had totally backfired on them, and I was convinced the Ukraine witch hunt would as well. At the time I said it would “go down as one of the dumbest and most embarrassing political moves of all time—so bad it should be reported as an in-kind contribution to President Trump’s 2020 reelect,” and I was right.
As the Democrats marched forward with impeachment, President Trump had an impressive record to be proud of—a stronger economy, historic tax cuts and deregulation, rising wages, fifty-year-low unemployment, better trade deals, energy dominance, a rebuilt military, victory over the ISIS caliphate, the wall going up, and 200-plus federal judges confirmed, including a more conservative Supreme Court. The Democrats had no case against him. They only wanted to impeach President Trump because he was winning.
In the midst of the impeachment fight, I traveled with President Trump to Michigan and Iowa ahead of the Iowa caucus.
At a rally in Des Moines the president said, “We have somebody named Sarah Sanders. Have you ever heard of her?”
The crowd roared.
“That’s pretty good!” said President Trump. “Come here, Sarah!”
I walked onstage in front of thousands of cheering Trump supporters in the packed arena.
“How much do we love this president?” The crowd went wild. “This is an incredibly special place,” I said. “I actually met my husband here in Des Moines so I love being back in Iowa.… We’re sorry you have so many crazy liberal Democrats running around here the last year, but the good news is it’s not going to matter because at the end of the day, this guy will still be our president!”
When all else failed, Democrats resorted to impeachment because they were afraid they’d lose the 2020 election. But President Trump won and Joe Biden lost the impeachment fight. The president was aided in that fight by a superb team, led by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, a devout Catholic and father of ten, who masterfully defended the president and cemented his place in the president’s inner circle. When the Senate acquitted and vindicated President Trump, his approval rating hit an all-time high in the Gallup poll.
As Democrats harassed President Trump, the president was busy killing the world’s most dangerous terrorists. President Trump ordered the successful raid in Syria that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who had the blood of thousands of American troops on his hands. President Trump was sending a clear message to our adversaries to never mess with America—a force for good against evil in a dangerous world.
The president was riding high as he delivered his State of the Union address on February 4, 2020, a speech that made a compelling case for four more years and that ended with Nancy Pelosi tearing up her copy of it in a fit of rage. One line that didn’t get much attention at the time was about the threat of a mysterious, deadly virus from Wuhan, China.
“Protecting Americans’ health also means fighting infectious diseases,” said the president in the State of the Union. “We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the coronavirus outbreak in China. My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.”
The week before, on January 31, President Trump had declared the coronavirus a public health emergency and announced travel restrictions for China. While the president and his team were starting preparations in the event of an outbreak in the United States, many leading Democrats in Washington were too distracted by impeachment to care about the emerging threat.
I talked to President Trump on the phone the day he declared the national emergency. “The American people want you to lead and be strong on this,” I said. “Your decision today was a good one. Keep it up.”
Despite criticism from Democrats and the media, the president made the right call with the China travel ban. He was also right to declare a national emergency and implement social distancing guidelines—not forever, but until we flattened the curve—which likely prevented the failure of hospitals and saved many American lives.
Bryan and I called my parents, my brother David and sister-in- law Lauren, as well as Bryan’s parents, and we all agreed to self-quarantine until the worst of the outbreak had passed so that we could continue to safely be around each other. Once the kids’ school closed—and likely to their detriment—we started to homeschool them together with David and Lauren’s three kids. I quickly developed an even greater appreciation for their amazing, talented, and very patient teachers! And I thought my job in the White House was hard!
A typical morning of homeschool started with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, with two kids assigned each day to hold the American flag. My sister-in-law Lauren and I taught the second-graders, Scarlett and her cousin Chandler. Bryan and my brother David taught the kindergarteners, Huck and his cousin Caroline. The youngest kids—George (four) and his cousin Thatcher (two)—ran wild, disrupting our lessons. For recess, which we had much more of than in regular school, we’d play four square, kickball or basketball, ride bikes, or go swimming. The kids were disappointed not to see their friends, but having their cousins, parents, and grandparents around made up for it. The kids loved having “Papa Mike” lead Sunday school.
Every night at bedtime George prayed that no one in our family would die from the virus. That was tough to hear from a four-year-old, but we leaned on our faith, taking it one day at a time and focusing on the positive. I had gone from the White House to homeschooling, but it was time I needed to reconnect with my family after three and a half years working for the president. At times it was hard not being there in the White House, but I was grateful to God for all He had given us, knowing He had a plan and I could trust Him no matter the circumstances.
My husband and I wanted to help people hurting during the crisis. After talking to my friends Phil Cox and Pete Snyder in Virginia about a nonprofit Pete had launched to help small businesses save jobs in his state, my husband and I founded a similar organization called the Arkansas 30 Day Fund to provide forgivable loans to small businesses impacted by COVID-19. It wasn’t a government program. We wrote the first check to get us started and raised charitable donations from other Arkansans to help struggling small businesses bridge the gap until they got relief from the government or demand returned for their product or service. It was quick, easy, and free of red tape. Arkansas State University vetted the applicants. Top business and political leaders came on board to support us. It was a partnership of people who might not agree on anything other than helping others in our community in need, and it worked.
It was an all-volunteer effort, and we couldn’t have done it without the help of many of our closest friends. Ashley and Chris Caldwell, Jordan and Noah Rhodes, Janis and Jim Terry, Megan Turner, Jordan Powell, Cathy Lanier, Chip Saltsman, and Karen and Aaron Black—lifelong friends who I had grown up with, battled alongside on campaigns, and who had helped our family pack up and move to Washington to join the Trump administration and then unpack after our move home to Arkansas—set aside their work and family commitments to volunteer their time, money, sweat, and tears to help us save jobs.
Within days of our launch, the Arkansas 30 Day Fund had received hundreds of applications and we started distributing funds to small businesses all across our state. Many of the small businesses we funded were owned by African Americans and by women. One of the first was Belle Starr Antiques & Vintage Market, owned by Beth Price in Fort Smith. In her testimonial video, Beth toured us through her beautiful showroom and spoke passionately about the eighty vendors who sell their products at Belle Starr and rely on her. “Essentially we are creating and supporting eighty small businesses within my business,” Beth said. She paused, choking up. “This is my heart. This is my soul. I operate from it and I’m working 100 percent harder for 75 percent less results. So any assistance we can gain … we are here and we appreciate it.”
I did a Zoom call with Beth a few days later and told her our team had awarded Belle Starr our maximum forgivable loan, which she didn’t need to repay. Like so many other small business owners we awarded funds to, Beth broke down and cried. “I’m just so thankful,” she said as tears ran down her face. “We have applied for every possible loan that’s been out there since all of this started and everything’s been shut down, and we haven’t received any assistance. So I just can’t tell you my absolute gratitude for what you guys are doing and how much it really, really, really is going to help us.”
As many Americans came together to help one another during the pandemic, it was disheartening to watch Joe Biden’s campaign and many of his liberal allies in the media politicize it. During a Fox News appearance, I said, “It’s easy for Joe Biden to launch attacks from his basement bunker. It’s much harder to actually lead in a crisis and work tirelessly to save lives and livelihoods as the president is doing.”
The next day President Trump called me and said, “I was planning to call you last night after I watched you do an amazing job on Hannity but I’m glad I waited until this morning because you were even better on Fox & Friends. You need to be on TV more!”
He then moved on to the daily press briefings he’d been doing from the White House and said, “Now I know what you were going through. From the moment you walk in the door you can see it on many of their faces how much they hate you!”
“It’s tough,” I said. “And don’t forget … many days you didn’t make my job any easier!”
He laughed.
“Continue to lead,” I said. “Keep going around the media and taking your message directly to the American people.”
“You know, Sarah. If there’s one good thing that comes out of this it may be people will forever quit shaking hands.”
The president, a notorious germophobe, added, “I mean, sometimes people I don’t even know go in for the hug! I know nothing can replace the warm embrace of a hug, but come on!”
He then asked again if I’d run for governor.
“I’ll make a decision after we get you reelected,” I said. “But if I do run, you know that means you’re going to have to come to Arkansas.”
“Of course,” said the president. “I’ll be there for you, and you know what else? You’re going to win.”
Along with the great economy, the pandemic had derailed the president’s reelection strategy. From his basement bunker, Joe Biden used the crisis to attack the president. Joe Biden should have directed his attacks at China, which unleashed the deadly pandemic on the world, but Biden was a friend of China. He said “a rising China is a positive development,” his son Hunter cofounded and served on the board of a major investment company there called Bohai Harvest RST, and he initially opposed President Trump’s China travel ban that saved American lives.
Biden just didn’t get it. China was our adversary, not our friend. Either America would lead the world in the twenty-first century or China would. Under President Trump, it would always be America first. Could the same be said of a President Biden?
A second term for President Trump would be better for all Americans than the Democratic alternative: a weaker military, liberal judges, higher taxes, and bigger government. Until the pandemic hit, our economy had never been stronger. African American and Hispanic unemployment was at an all-time low thanks to President Trump, who had done far more to empower minorities with better jobs, higher wages, and hope for a better future than Joe Biden ever had. President Trump rebuilt our economy before. He could be trusted to do it again.
Even though President Trump was the incumbent, he was still the outsider, disruptor, and change agent against Biden, the ultimate Washington insider and representative of the status quo. Biden was a liberal career politician who has been part of the problem for fifty years. He was for bad trade deals and free healthcare and government benefits for illegal immigrants, none of which helped American workers. And “nice guy” Joe Biden with all his “empathy” and “compassion” supported taxpayer-funded abortion, showing no compassion whatsoever for the weakest and most vulnerable among us—the unborn child.
The Democratic Party had been hijacked by the left, who actually believe they know how to protect our families, choose our healthcare, run our businesses, and spend our money better than we do. Wake up, America—our freedom, prosperity, and way of life are on the line in the 2020 election. And don’t think for a moment this campaign is going to be easy. Some of the most powerful forces in the world—the liberal media, Hollywood, academia, big government, and China—are aligned against us. The America we love is under attack, and we must fight for it.
After the 2020 election, the American people will have to put aside some of our differences to face the tremendous challenges before us: a deadly pandemic and its toll on our economy, social unrest, and the dangerous threat of a rising China. We can either be divided and fail or start coming together and prevail. It will not be easy, but we are Americans, and there is nothing we can’t do united as one nation under God.
As has been the case for all of human history, we are in the midst of an epic battle between good and evil. America must continue to be a force for good in that battle. As C. S. Lewis once said, “Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it.”
Many years ago an eleven-year-old girl and her family traveled to Israel. Her parents had been going there for decades, but this was the girl’s first trip. The family planned to visit the historical and biblical sites that served as a basis for much of their Christian faith. They walked where Jesus walked and performed miracles at the Sea of Galilee, and worshiped at the Garden Tomb where their Savior rose from the dead after giving His life for us. One of the last stops on their trip was to Yad Vashem, which commemorates one of the darkest eras of human history—the Nazi genocide against the Jewish people. The eleven-year-old girl’s parents weren’t sure if she was ready for it, but they wanted her to understand the importance of standing up against evil, so they decided to bring her. The girl’s father would stay with her and if at any point it became too much he would take her out.
Yad Vashem sits on Mount Herzl, often referred to as the Mount of Remembrance. Yad Vashem in Hebrew means “a memorial and a name,” and its goal is to memorialize the Holocaust and in particular all the Jewish people who were killed and had no descendants left on earth to carry on their names.
As they walked through Yad Vashem the girl watched videos of Jewish families being marched to their deaths in gas chambers. She saw an exhibit featuring hundreds of pairs of shoes taken off the feet of Jewish children her age or younger and piled high to be burned. She listened as the names of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis were read off one by one, and was told it takes three months to get through the full list.
The eleven-year-old girl didn’t speak as she walked through Yad Vashem. At one point she reached up for her father’s hand, gripping it tightly, but she didn’t say a word. Her father, never leaving her side, watched his daughter and waited, hoping she understood why her parents wanted her to see this. The father worried they’d made a mistake, that it was all just too much for her at such a young age.
They got to the end and there was a guest book for visitors to sign. The girl reached up and took the pen out of her father’s shirt pocket that she knew was always there.
Looking over her shoulder, the father watched as his daughter inscribed her name and address in the book, and then paused at the section for comments. She still hadn’t said a word since entering Yad Vashem, but in the book the little girl carefully wrote:
“Why didn’t somebody do something?”
Tears welled in the father’s eyes, and in that moment he knew that she got it.
“Why didn’t somebody do something?”
The little girl understood. All it takes for evil to win is for good people to do nothing.
The reason I know that story is that I was that little girl.
My prayer for America is that like the brave generations before us, we take a stand against evil. Now is our chance to choose the right side. Let us be the somebodies who do something.