Every day as White House press secretary was a bit different but some things never changed. Most days I got up at 5:30 a.m. to emails, texts, and missed calls from reporters and morning show producers. I would respond to as many inquiries as I could before getting out of bed, and then rush to the shower before my three kids came running in needing clothes, breakfast, and lunches packed for the day.
Usually by 6:30 a.m. the president was tweeting and making news, which could completely alter our day.
I kissed my kids and husband good-bye and by 7:15 a.m. I was out the door in the car and on the phone returning calls from the president, senior administration officials, or reporters, and checking in with staff on any breaking news we needed to be ready for that morning. I would arrive in my office in the West Wing by 7:45 a.m., where I had a pot of coffee and the senior White House press and communications staff there to do a quick rundown of the news of the day, the message we planned to drive, and what stories or events we needed to monitor. This was a tight-knit group. The original group consisted of Hope Hicks, Josh Raffel, Michael Anton, Raj Shah, Hogan Gidley, Jessica Ditto, Lindsay Walters, Adam Kennedy, and Ory Rinat, and as roles changed and staff was added, others included Mercedes Schlapp, Bill Shine, Judd Deere, Stephen Groves, Julia Hahn, and Alexa Henning. This meeting was half-work, half-play. We said things we couldn’t say to anyone else and joked about responses we wished we could say publicly. In this short window we did life together and became friends. Then we got serious and focused on the onslaught that was coming at us.
After this group met we added the rest of the press and communications staff to the meeting to go over a more general overview of what was needed for the day and walked through the daily schedule. It was only 8:30 a.m. and I was already on my second cup of coffee with three hours of work behind me. After I wrapped the press and communications meetings, I headed to the White House senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room where a few senior members of our team and I weighed in on the news of the day, our messaging recommendations, and made requests from senior administration officials for information or to do media appearances. We also got information we needed regarding the president’s schedule and other major events, as well as detailed answers we needed for the many stories reporters were working on.
Around the time the White House senior staff meeting finished, I would often get a call from the president if I hadn’t already. He would give me a list of things he wanted me to handle—some related to my job, and many not. He’d always want to know “how things are playing” in the media. It also gave me a chance to ask him for guidance on some of the incoming I was getting that morning and his latest thinking on an issue or news development. If there was something big driving the day and he hadn’t called me yet, this was usually the time I called him to check in and get an update so I could do my job and accurately speak on his behalf.
After the senior White House staff meeting or call with the president, I had a little time to respond to email, return calls, and often do quick meetings with reporters who were constantly waiting outside my office throughout the day looking for updates on stories. By 10:30 a.m. the president’s private meetings and calls from the White House residence had finished and policy and internal staff meetings in the West Wing with the president were starting. Over the next couple of hours, I spent my time in and out of these meetings. Around noon our team would gather in my office to begin briefing prep. During our early morning meeting we discussed key topics we thought would be important that day and divided up who would be responsible for making sure we had the most up-to-date and accurate information on any given topic. Oftentimes, this meant bringing in a subject matter expert to give me a quick briefing and allow me to ask questions. For instance, if we knew that a new jobs report was about to hit, I would connect with National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow. Kudlow, always the happy warrior, was one of my favorite people in the White House, and brought a smile to my face every time I saw him. He was somebody everyone in the building loved to be around. The day Larry had a heart attack it felt like the spirit of our team had been crushed, and I made it my personal mission to get him to quit smoking. I’m still fighting that battle!
Although constantly at odds with the press, the president still appreciated their power, and knew that it was impossible for me to do my job effectively if I wasn’t in the room. It was the only way I could understand the president’s thinking, know his position on a range of issues and policy debates, and clearly articulate his message on a day-to-day basis to the country and to the world. As a result, I spent more time with and talking to the president over the course of my two years as press secretary than any senior White House official other than Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Dan Scavino. I realized quickly that while updates from senior administration officials were critical for me to do my job, the president had the final word and in the end his word was the only one that mattered to effectively speak on his behalf.
During the White House press briefings nothing was off-limits—so prepping could sometimes be an impossible task. I had a great team who did an excellent job tracking the news and identifying the most likely topics. Raj Shah and Adam Kennedy could see blind spots I couldn’t, and were masterful at finding information and data points to support the administration’s message. I would have been lost without their preparation and guidance, but occasionally we missed something and I either had to go with my gut instinct or just get back to the reporter following the briefing with an answer. The most effective briefing prep for me was a murder board—where my team hammered me with one difficult question after another. Briefing prep was stressful but it was also one of the best parts of our day. It helped inform our team of where we were on a wide range of issues and also created a team atmosphere because we had to look at most every briefing as us against them, which brought us closer together. A lot of reporters were coming to the briefing hoping for a big gotcha moment that would go viral, or to ask something that made the president or the administration look bad. It was our job to do the opposite—get accurate information out and deliver the president’s message directly to the American people, not the 150 or so reporters, photographers, and videographers in the room.
I would read through the script that I would deliver at the top of the briefing. At the beginning of my tenure it was written by communications aide Cliff Sims, an excellent writer and fellow southerner who shared my desire to use the topper to tell a story. We collaborated to find good stories that would illustrate how the president’s policies were working and lifting Americans up. Some days we used the topper to make announcements about the president’s or first lady’s schedule or initiatives that were important to the administration. We saw this as five minutes to talk about whatever we wanted and drive the narrative.
One of my favorite things to do was to find letters to the president from kids who dreamed of coming to the White House. A boy named Frank had a lawn-mowing business and sent a letter offering to mow the lawn at the White House. He wrote:
Dear Mr. President:
It would be my honor to mow the White House lawn some weekend for you. Even though I’m only ten, I would like to show the nation what young people like me are ready for. I admire your business background and have started my own business. I have been mowing my neighbors’ lawn for some time. Please see the attached flier. Here’s a list of what I have and you are free to pick whatever you want: power mower, push mower, and weed whacker. I can bring extra fuel for the power mower and charged batteries for the weed whacker. I will do this at no charge.
Sincerely,
Frank
I read his letter from the podium and invited Frank to come and do just that. We coordinated with the National Park Service, which maintains the White House grounds, and Frank and his dad came to the White House and Frank mowed the lawn in the Rose Garden. As he was mowing, the president walked out of the Oval Office and high-fived Frank and thanked him for his letter and hard work. The pictures and video of Frank and the president went viral and it was really fun to watch it come together. Afterward, Frank told a reporter that “so far it’s pretty much the best day of my life.” It was moments like this that made my job so fulfilling, reminding us all how special it was to do what we do and who we got to do it for.
After Cliff left the White House, Judd Deere, one of my deputies, a fellow Arkansan, and one of the best hires I’ve ever made, took over writing the introduction for the briefings. The briefings were often intense, but I loved doing them. It was a crazy adrenaline rush to walk out under the bright lights into a room full of some of the most aggressive reporters in the world and have them fire questions at me, knowing one mistake could hurt the president and his team, not to mention cost me my job and career. I did more than one hundred televised briefings as White House press secretary, and many more gaggles with reporters in the White House driveway, on Air Force One, and on foreign trips. Going head-to-head with the media to stand up for the president and make the case for his policies was one of my favorite parts of the job. After the briefing wrapped, I often went into the Oval or the president’s private dining room to check in and get his feedback. He’d usually watch the briefings live or record and watch them later, but knowing that my boss—along with hundreds of reporters and millions of Americans—was tuned in to every word I said only added to the pressure to not mess it up! Often the rest of the afternoon was spent with the president in the Oval Office or his study off the Oval participating in his afternoon calls and meetings. The president is one of the most fun people to be around I’ve ever known. He has a huge personality and a laugh-out-loud sense of humor. I loved hearing his stories and watching him engage with members of Congress, CEOs, and foreign leaders, and spending this time with him was how I really got to know him and understand what he wanted and how best to do my job.
My evenings were often filled with more meetings and calls with reporters looking to get the last information they could before they filed stories for the day. At 6:00 p.m. our full press and communications team gathered again to talk about anything that needed to be closed out for the day and what was on deck for tomorrow. I’d then tie up any loose ends before I’d head to an event or home to try and catch my kids briefly before they went to bed. Many people think the only time the press secretary interacts with the press is during the briefing, but in reality that’s the least of it. I spent much of the day and night responding to their many questions and working stories, which is one of the most underappreciated but important parts of the job. There are hundreds of reporters around the world who had my direct cell or email or could simply knock on the door of my office in the West Wing, so the notion that we weren’t accessible to the press is absurd.
When I arrived home, I would read books to my kids, tuck them in, and kiss them goodnight. Afterward, I would eat a quick and often microwaved dinner while talking to my husband about my day. Then I would sit down on our couch and return more calls and emails until I went to bed around midnight, only to get up and do it all again the next day. It was exhausting, but exhilarating. I was always tired, but I ran on adrenaline and wouldn’t have traded my job for any in the world. I was honored the president chose me and worked tirelessly to move the president’s agenda and our country forward.
In the raging battle between the president and the media, I often felt like I was on the front lines in no-man’s-land. In one of my first briefings in my new role, I noted that I was the first mom to ever hold the job of White House press secretary, and said to my daughter, Scarlett, “Don’t listen to the critics. Fulfill your potential, because in America you still can.” It was the summer of 2017, and the president had only been in office for about six months, but the message I’d delivered for Scarlett was one I’d need to take to heart again and again under relentless attacks in the years ahead. Nothing was off-limits to the angriest Trump haters: my character, my weight and appearance, even my fitness to be a mother. MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said I was “vile,” “not even human,” and should be choked. In response to her hateful vitriol and incitement of violence against me, MSNBC did nothing.
The attacks from the media—particularly from liberal anchors and commentators on MSNBC and CNN—quickly intensified as I established myself as the spokesperson for President Trump. In response to one particular attack from a well-known media figure, my friend and colleague Josh Raffel sent an email defending me:
Subject: A personal note
We’ve always had great back-and-forths so I feel comfortable sending this note.…
Sarah is one of the classiest, smartest, wittiest, most generous, toughest people you would meet. Not to mention she is fun as hell. And I say that as a liberal New York Jew who never met a religious woman from the South.
And I think if you spent a day watching her behind the scenes, you would feel the same way and would not send a tweet like you sent.…
Would just ask you to consider that next time you consider attacking her like that.
Not sure how much credibility I have, but very few people I’d put it behind and Sarah is at the top of that list.
It’s an honor to work for her and if you spent any time with her, you would feel the same way.
Thanks for reading.
—Josh
The media often reported about infighting in the White House—and yes, there was unfortunately too much of that—but what those reporters often missed was the close relationships many of us established battling together in the trenches. When I was home sick with strep throat and high fever Ivanka had matzo ball soup sent over from her favorite deli. When I’d had a rough day, Hope and Josh had pizza delivered so I didn’t have to make dinner for my family. On my birthday, my deputies Hogan Gidley and Lindsay Walters and my assistant Janet Montesi planned a surprise party with dozens of White House staff and friends. Hogan kept cough drops in his pocket for me for before and after every briefing and interview, once Ubered across town to pick up my dog Winston while I was traveling with the president, and despite being the neat freak he is, let my kids destroy his office every time they came by the White House. In fact, it was there my youngest son, George, learned his favorite phrase, “not cool, man!” from Hogan after George smeared syrup from his pancakes all over Hogan’s desk. When I wanted to leave the office early to make it to my daughter’s school performance or a parent-teacher conference, Raj Shah, my principal deputy, Hogan, Lindsay, Judd, and the rest of the press team covered for me and did an outstanding job so I didn’t have to worry about not being there. It’s been said that “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” but from my experience in the Trump White House nothing could have been further from the truth. I had real friends in the White House who quickly became like family to me.
As we departed on the president’s first big trip to Asia later that fall, the Los Angeles Times ran a column by their Pulitzer Prize–columnist David Horsey referring to me as a “chunky soccer mom,” the first time a mainstream media outlet explicitly insulted my appearance. En route to Japan, nobody on Air Force One said anything about it. My husband hadn’t said a word. I suspect nobody wanted to bring more attention to it and offend me. We arrived in Tokyo for the state dinner hosted by Japanese prime minister Abe. Earlier in the day, we had bilateral meetings between the United States and Japanese delegations and I was part of the US delegation. As we walked into the meeting the president pulled me aside, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Sarah—you’re tough, you’re beautiful, and you’re good at your job. That’s why they attack you. Never let those f——ers get you down!” He then slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Okay? Now, let’s get back to work.”
It was exactly what I needed to hear. The president could be a very kind and generous man. It was a side of him I regularly witnessed but unfortunately very few Americans got to see. Again and again, as a woman and a working mom, President Trump not only empowered me—he defended me and reaffirmed me when the feminists and liberals were tearing me down with cruel and dehumanizing personal attacks.
For Thanksgiving, I went with Bryan and the kids to his family farm in Kansas. As I did every Thanksgiving, I made my bourbon chocolate pecan pie. I’ll admit, this was a perfect-looking pie, and I was pretty proud of it so I posted a picture of it on social media. The next morning I woke up and noticed that April Ryan, a White House correspondent and CNN political analyst, had accused me on Twitter of lying about making the pie. (In previous briefings, April Ryan had asked me—among other ridiculous questions—whether President Trump believed “slavery is wrong.”)
I replied to her tweet: “Don’t worry April because I’m nice I’ll bake one for you next week #realpie #fakenews;-)” to which April said she still won’t eat the pie and still didn’t believe I made it.
Fox & Friends ran a segment on the #PieGate controversy and interviewed loyal Trump supporters Diamond and Silk, who said, “Only thing April can cook is fake news,” and that they wouldn’t eat April’s cooking anyway because “It be nasty!” My dad weighed in, suggesting Special Counsel Bob Mueller would now have to investigate #PieGate. The controversy spilled into the following week, getting extensive coverage on MSNBC and ABC’s The View.
Our team at the White House had been invited to the Christmas potluck lunch hosted by the White House correspondents in their offices behind the press briefing room and in the basement below the West Wing. Martha Kumar, an avid researcher who knows everything there is to know about the history of the press and presidency, is the main organizer and always brings a large ham as the entrée. There was a ton of food and champagne, and this year there would also be my now-famous bourbon chocolate pecan pie. To make sure there was no question as to whether I made it, I chronicled each step of the process on my Twitter feed. I started by laying out all the ingredients on my kitchen table (including pecans from chief of staff to the vice president Nick Ayers’s Georgia pecan farm), mixed them in a bowl, assembled and baked the pies, and delivered them the following day to the potluck. #PieGate was over. April still refused to eat the pie, but other reporters seemed to enjoy it, and I got a chance to show that regardless of the false personal attacks, I wasn’t going to let it change who I am or the way I treat others with whom I disagree.
At the lunch, Greg Clugston of Standard Radio wrote and read an original poem to the cadence of “The Night Before Christmas” to recap the “highlights” of the year. This was something Greg did every year. Some parts were funny, others not so much, but it was nice for everyone to stop for a moment and enjoy celebrating the holidays together.
’Twas the Night Before Christmas
2017 White House Press Basement Version
BY GREG CLUGSTON
’Twas the night before Christmas and in the White House,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes corporate tax cuts soon would be there.
POTUS was restless, watching Fox News on cable,
Tweeting as fast as his fingers were able.
Soon he dozed off, dreaming of the past year,
Eleven months in office and plenty to cheer.
Inauguration Day boasted the “largest” ever crowd,
Sean Spicer’s debut was angry and loud.
Travel bans were issued, executive orders signed,
Judge Gorsuch was confirmed—a great legal mind.
Trump reversed policies on climate and trade,
And delivered on Jerusalem where others had strayed.
Stocks soared on the Dow, plus a strong S&P,
With low unemployment and a rising GDP.
He blasted “fake news” and media hacks,
Opting instead for “alternative facts.”
Trump knocked NFL players for taking a knee,
And shocked a few parents at the Boy Scouts Jamboree.
In Charlottesville we witnessed long-simmering divides,
Trump drew fire citing “fine people on both sides.”
With North Korean missiles in the Sea of Japan,
Trump vowed to wipe out “Little Rocket Man.”
Soon, in the West Wing, chaos took hold,
And The Donald returned to The Apprentice of old.
He fired Yates and Comey—and Michael Flynn, too,
And the kiss-blowing Mooch—we hardly knew you.
Priebus and Bannon were also let go,
With General Kelly now running the show.
“Liddle” Bob Corker played the role of tormentor,
Calling the White House an “adult day care center,”
Trump tweeted insults to keep the upper hand,
“Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” and “lightweight” Gillibrand.
Obamacare revealed a Republican rift,
But the “big beautiful tax cut” is a lovely Christmas gift.
All of a sudden, there arose such a clatter,
POTUS jumped up to see what was the matter.
When, who should appear on the South Lawn below,
But Special Counsel Mueller with his lawyers in tow.
His Russia investigation quickly intensifying,
After adviser Michael Flynn admitted to lying.
POTUS dismissed the probe as simply a stunt,
It’s “phony,” “a hoax,” “a political witch hunt.”
Then Trump exclaimed, having reached a conclusion:
“Merry Christmas to all! There was no collusion!”
Later that week I also attended and spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Association Christmas party, which was covered in the Washingtonian:
“It’s so nice to be among friends,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday night at a gathering for White House reporters, “which is why we invited so many people from the White House press staff.”
Sanders got her turn at the party lectern, and she brought jokes. “With so many writers in the room and so many people working on books, we thought the best way to do that was to walk through the top ten book titles of the first year of the Trump Administration,” Sanders said. “In true Trump Administration fashion, instead of ten we actually have 13 because we want to be the biggest and the best, and frankly we’re not that great at math.”
Among the faux book titles Sanders suggested: Off the Record by Anthony Scaramucci, the foulmouthed and short-lived communications director; An Insiders Guide to the Hatch Act by Conway with a foreword by Walter Shaub, the former director of Office of Government Ethics who’s now one of Twitter’s most popular Trump antagonists; Please Call on Me by Brian Karem, a magazine stringer who loudly admonished Sanders in June after one of her “fake news” riffs; and Moving Markets by Brian Ross, the suspended ABC News correspondent who incorrectly reported last week that Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor, was preparing to testify against Trump in the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Ross’s report was blamed by many on the right wing for causing a brief, albeit sharp, drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.)
Another title I mentioned: The Joy of Baking coauthored by April Ryan and Sarah Sanders.
I closed my remarks and said, “In all seriousness, I think that often people say I have the worst job in Washington. I think I have one of the best jobs in Washington.…” I really meant it. I loved my job, and I loved the people I had the privilege to work with every day, including the president, his family, the White House staff, and Secret Service. I even loved working with a lot of the White House correspondents. The White House correspondents are some of the toughest, smartest, most aggressive journalists in the world, and I enjoyed the challenge of going up against them.
There were more than five hundred credentialed members of the press with access to the White House, and only about a dozen staff in the White House Press Office. To say we were outnumbered is an understatement. The journalists covering the White House came at us 24/7 and I had to be regularly available to answer their questions and provide accurate and helpful information, while also making the case for the president and his policies. I doubt many of the White House correspondents voted for President Trump, and often their anti-Trump bias influenced their coverage, but there were journalists covering the White House who were professionals doing their best to get the story right. CNN’s Jim Acosta was not one of them.
In the early days of the administration, Jim Acosta was friendly off camera, going so far as to buy a round of drinks for our table at Le Diplomate one night, but the moment the cameras were on, it was the Jim Acosta show—grandstanding to build his profile as the leader of the anti-Trump resistance in the media. It reminded me of a lesson my dad taught me growing up in Arkansas when he was governor: “Just because a reporter is friendly doesn’t make him your friend.”
Acosta and a few other White House correspondents seemingly determined early on that their best path to a more lucrative TV or book deal was to make a scene at the televised White House press briefings. In previous administrations the White House press briefings were televised in their entirety mainly on C-SPAN. In the Trump administration, the briefings were often carried live on all the major cable TV networks, and clips of the briefing were then rebroadcast again and again throughout the day and the evening on cable and broadcast TV news programs and social media. The media exposure from the briefings was significant and Jim Acosta wasn’t going to let the opportunity to be the story instead of report on it go to waste. To be fair to his colleagues, most of them couldn’t stand him and were embarrassed by his unprofessional behavior.
The relationship between President Trump and CNN wasn’t good during the campaign, and got worse in the White House. CNN was desperate to compete with MSNBC for the most vehemently anti-Trump cable TV news viewers, and CNN was losing the ratings war to MSNBC—badly. Many reporters like to pretend that the media is all about reporting the news, when in fact the ultimate objective for any media outlet is to make money. In the TV news business, ratings are king, and CNN’s ratings were usually dead last among the major cable TV news networks. CNN’s coverage of the president became pretty much wall-to-wall negative, often focused on the latest conspiracy theory about the Trump campaign and Russia. CNN wasted the better part of two years spreading lies and fake news about the president and Russia. “CNN sucks!” became a rallying cry at the president’s rallies, at one point so loud it drowned out Jim Acosta’s live hit for the network.
One of the worst problems in the media today is the lack of separation between news and opinion. I rarely if ever agree with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s viewpoint, but she isn’t a news anchor, and she doesn’t pretend to be one either. She is a commentator, which means she is paid to give her opinion and frankly she’s not bad at it. Sean Hannity does the same on the right, and is very good at it, which is why he dominates and has the highest ratings on cable TV news. Maddow and Hannity each have a strong point of view, and that’s fine because their shows aren’t straight news—they’re primarily opinion and commentary. The news should be different. You shouldn’t be able to tell what a reporter’s point of view is. Their reporting should give the facts, not their opinions, and let you decide. We have lost this in journalism today. One only needs to follow the anti-Trump commentary on many reporters’ Twitter feeds to know this is true. Thankfully, not all reporters have fallen into this trap. There are still some excellent reporters and news anchors—and not just on Fox News!—who even after working with them for years I still don’t know what their point of view is or which side they’re on. But in too many cases in the media the line between news and opinion is blurred and in some cases that line doesn’t exist at all. CNN used to be a respected news outlet but is now driven largely by anti-Trump opinion masquerading as news.
In the fall of 2017, CNN announced they’d boycott the first White House Christmas party of the Trump presidency, and I responded: “Christmas comes early! Finally, good news from @CNN.” This didn’t go over well with the folks at CNN but it didn’t bother me at all! In one of my first of many contentious exchanges with Jim Acosta at a White House press briefing, Acosta said, “Journalists make honest mistakes, that doesn’t make them fake news,” as I patiently waited to let him finish his lecture.
“When journalists make honest mistakes, they should own up to them,” I said.
Acosta interrupted me, “We do.”
“Sometimes you do. And a lot of times you don’t.”
Acosta tried again to interrupt me, but I said, “I’m sorry, I’m not finished. There’s a very big difference between making honest mistakes, and purposefully misleading the American people.”
The exchange immediately went viral, with a meme circulating on social media that featured my face photoshopped over Xena: Warrior Princess as “Sarah Warrior Press Secretary.” In it, I was standing over Jim Acosta holding a club with a graphic that read “Wielding the fact hammer in a post-truth world.”
Not ashamed to make my point for me that CNN was “purposefully misleading the American people,” Jim Acosta wrote a purposefully misleading and totally fake story that the president was angry with me because he didn’t like one of my briefings. CNN ran it all day on their network, which was then picked up by other media outlets. What had actually happened was the president called me into his private dining room off the Oval Office after that particular briefing to tell me it was one of my best. He then called me in the next day again and said, “This CNN story is total bulls——. You’re doing a great job.” Ivanka even called CNN to ask for a correction, but CNN refused to do so and kept running the story anyway. It was a classic case of a media outlet taking the lies of one anonymous source “close to the White House” over the on-the-record denials of senior White House officials with actual firsthand knowledge.
It was a problem I dealt with repeatedly. Some reporters were all too willing to write misleading stories based on lies or misrepresentations from anonymous sources so long as it made the president or his team look bad. In some cases, you could easily identify the leakers because the reporters they leaked to often went out of their way to say nice things about them publicly. Some administration officials and “sources close to the White House” leaked to knife their rivals. Others did it to make it appear they were in the room or in proximity to power to feel important. And some leaked to advance a policy agenda that ran contrary to the president’s agenda, believing they were smarter than the president but evidently not smart enough to recognize that nobody had elected them to anything! I detested it all. Leaking was a shameful betrayal of the president’s trust and never in the best interest of the administration or the country. One of the most frustrating parts of my job as White House press secretary was cleaning up the mess. Even without the leaks, my job was all-consuming 24/7, but I sacrificed way too many nights I’d planned to be home to tuck my kids in bed or enjoy dinner with my husband to instead spend hours working to correct a story based on false or misleading leaks from administration officials or “sources close to the White House.” At one point the leaking got so out of control I’d had enough and lost it at a senior White House staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the West Wing. I erupted at my colleagues, and told them they were hurting the president and to cut it out. I was so angry and frustrated by a team I genuinely loved and cared about. No one said anything as I finished my impassioned plea, got up, and stormed out of the room.
As we neared the end of 2017, the Senate was set to vote on the president’s tax cut—the biggest in American history. The legislation would cut income tax rates for families and businesses and double the child tax credit, and also repeal the Obamacare individual mandate and make America more energy independent. Democrats were unified in opposition to the president’s tax cut and determined to stop it, but across the administration this fight had become a great unifier. We had a common goal to work toward and we all knew that if we could get it done, it would be a historic, legacy-defining victory for the president and unleash America’s economy.
As we closed in on the vote, our press and comms team worked closely with key administration officials and Republican leaders to aggressively make the case for the tax cut and hold Republicans in line. This would be a key test of whether the president could get his agenda through Congress after the failure to repeal Obamacare. It was a must-win. President Trump and Vice President Pence campaigned hard across the country for the tax cut, and I repeatedly made the case for it in White House press briefings and media interviews. As our momentum increased, so did the personal attacks against the president and me from liberals in the media. Criticism of me professionally is fair game and to be expected, but the personal attacks reeked of hypocrisy. Mika Brzezinski, the author of several books on empowering women and combating sexism, said on her MSNBC show Morning Joe that I was unfit to be a mother. On Fox News’s Laura Ingraham’s show I responded: “I think it’s sad that they’re attacking a lot of us while claiming to champion women’s causes and women’s issues,” and later added, “the president’s historic tax cuts plus doubling of the child tax credit will do infinitely more to empower working moms than liberals’ personal attacks on women they disagree with ever will.”
Just a few days before Christmas the Senate passed the president’s tax cuts with unanimous Republican support, and the president signed it into law. We celebrated at the White House, and American businesses celebrated by handing out Christmas bonuses to millions of their employees. We had finished the president’s first year strong, and despite some setbacks, it was clear the president had a lot of major achievements to be proud of:
✦ a booming economy;
✦ millions of new jobs & trillions in new wealth;
✦ lower taxes on families & businesses;
✦ repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate;
✦ greater energy independence;
✦ confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court;
✦ ISIS on the run and their caliphate in ruins.
The press never gave the president much credit for these achievements—90 percent of the media coverage in the first year of the Trump presidency was negative. The American people ended 2017 much better off under President Trump than his predecessor, but you certainly wouldn’t know it from the media coverage.
The annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, also known as “Nerd Prom,” has long been one of the most high-profile social events of the year in Washington. There were dozens of parties all over town hosted by media outlets large and small leading up to the dinner, and brunches the following day. The dinner itself included major reporters, news anchors, professional athletes, Hollywood stars, and too many politicians to count. In years past the president and first lady often attended the dinner as well. It was a must-attend event for the political and media elite. The men traded in their sports coats for tuxedos and the women were adorned with floor-length gowns, blowouts, and designer clutches. Held in the Washington Hilton Hotel, the purpose of the dinner was to raise money for the organization, present awards to journalists for their work that year, and give scholarships to journalism students.
In 2017 the president not only declined to attend the dinner, but decided none of the administration would attend either. The year 2018 was different. While the president still declined an invitation to attend and speak, he encouraged administration officials to attend on his behalf. Since the president wasn’t going I was asked to sit at the head table onstage as the official representative of the White House.
Even though the president wasn’t attending the dinner he graciously agreed to invite the journalism students being honored to the White House for a tour and to meet with him and the vice president. The president loved hosting people in the White House. He was proud of its history and the grandness of the building and grounds and enjoyed showing it off to people who otherwise might never get to see it. I personally worked with the board to make sure all the students were invited to attend.
In response to the announcement that I’d attend instead of the president, Michelle Wolf, the comedian invited to be the main speaker at the dinner, said, “So happy Sarah Sanders was finally invited to prom!” Later I talked to Margaret Talev, a reporter for Bloomberg who served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and said, “I appreciate the invite and want to come to the dinner. In fact I canceled on my annual girls’ trip with my best friends from college in order to make it. But if your featured speaker Michelle Wolf is just going to trash me and my colleagues while I’m up there onstage in front of thousands of people in the room and millions of people watching live on TV I’ll have to respectfully decline and go spend the weekend with my friends instead.” That year my friends were traveling to Asheville, North Carolina. Given all the stress and craziness of our new life in Washington, I had really been looking forward to a relaxing stress-free weekend with them and hated that I’d be missing it. Margaret said she understood and to let her talk to Michelle. Not long after, Margaret called me and said she had spoken to Michelle’s manager who reassured her it was not something I needed to worry about and that Michelle even planned to say some nice things about me. Despite Margaret’s reassurances, I had no illusions Michelle was going to be nice. Still, I had made a commitment to the president and the White House Correspondents’ Association to attend and represent the administration and I decided to honor that commitment.
Bryan and I met up with several of my other colleagues at the White House to get ready and go to the dinner together. I was wearing a bright-blue floor-length Chiara Boni dress and my hair was pulled up in a low bun. Bryan looked handsome in his custom-tailored tuxedo and I thought we had cleaned up pretty well! We arrived early and made our way down the red carpet, where we stopped for photos and even a couple of on-air interviews, including with CNN. We went by a few predinner receptions to say hi to friends and right before the dinner started Bryan and I separated so he could take his seat at a table at the front of the room with the Bloomberg team. Margaret had invited him as their guest.
I arrived backstage for a reception for the “VIP participants” who’d all be onstage together just before the dinner was set to start. I hugged several members of the White House Correspondents’ Association and thanked them for having me. We all enjoyed a glass of wine together and took a couple of group photos as we waited on the other dinner participants to take their seats. Michelle Wolf came in the room just before we went onstage and I introduced myself to her. She was a bit cold. Her arrival to the small reception immediately changed the mood of the room. I wasn’t sure if other people felt it or not, but she was the outsider in this group, not me. I worked with these reporters every day. I knew if they were married, had kids, and where they were from. I knew when one of their parents had passed away, about a road trip across the country one of their kids had recently taken, and that one of them loved pottery and another loved flying airplanes. These were not strangers to me. They were people I knew well and for the most part actually had a good working relationship with and respected. But Michelle’s presence in the room took that comfort away.
We all got in line in order of where we would sit at the table on- stage and waited for our cue to walk out. We entered the room to polite applause and found our seats. I was in the seat second closest to the podium at stage left and Olivier Knox, a reporter for Sirius Radio and the incoming WHCA president, was on my right. Jonathan Karl from ABC News, who was next in line to be WHCA president after Olivier, sat on my left. I knew both of them and we chatted easily as we waited for the program to begin. The servers weren’t quick to refill the wineglasses and Olivier assured us that would not be the case next year when he was president!
Part of the program was to honor the journalists selected by the WHCA for their work that year and the students. As each journalist’s name was called out and they made their way to the stage the room would stand and applaud them. There was a video from outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan where he made a joke about his LinkedIn page and smoking pot, a few reporters made remarks about “Me Too,” but the real focus of the dinner program was the keynote speaker—Michelle Wolf.
I sat quietly onstage as Michelle Wolf only a few feet away from me repeatedly mocked my appearance and attacked my integrity. It wasn’t funny—it was cruel. She went on to make awful comments about the president, the vice president, and several other White House officials. As I sat listening to her hateful comments, I debated walking out or perhaps even throwing my wineglass at her. But ultimately I stayed in my seat and held my head high.
Even though Bryan was seated with Margaret’s colleagues from Bloomberg at the center table directly in front of the stage, I couldn’t see his face or his reaction. Few people in the room were laughing, and most appeared to be in shock. I found out later that Margaret was nearly in tears when she approached Bryan after the event, at a total loss for words. To their credit, many of the White House correspondents were appalled. The White House Correspondents’ Association should not have invited Michelle Wolf to speak at the dinner and they recognized just how damaging it was to the media’s credibility to have given Michelle a major platform to maliciously attack me and other women in the White House, just moments after other reporters onstage had lectured us about women’s empowerment in the “Me Too” era.
The easy thing to do would have been to walk off the stage, or go home after the dinner, but Bryan and I agreed it would be better to send a message that I was not going to be bullied or intimidated. I wouldn’t let her nastiness get to me or define me. We went with several of our friends to the after-party hosted by NBC and stayed until last call. Many reporters, including CNN’s Don Lemon and his partner, were gracious and apologetic that night. It had been an epic fail for the White House Correspondents’ Association. I didn’t want it to be, but it was, and everyone knew it.
The next morning Axios’s Mike Allen summarized the evening in his newsletter read by Washington’s political and media elite:
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner ended with a barrage of vulgar anti-Trump jokes by comedian Michelle Wolf, who attacked the appearance of White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who was sitting with her at the head table.…
Why it matters: If the dinner can only attract liberal presidents and liberal comedians, the conclusion is inevitable.
How things went off the rails:
The Gridiron Club, which hosts another major dinner for Washington reporters, has a rule for its roasters: “Singe, don’t burn.”
And one guest told me a good rule of thumb for comedy is not to attack how people look or who they are.
Wolf—an alumnus of The Daily Show who has a Netflix talk show coming May 27—didn’t follow either of those …
New York Times’ Maggie Haberman: “That @PressSec sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive.”
Trump held a counterprogramming rally in Washington Township, Michigan, where he said:
You may have heard I was invited to another event tonight, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But I’d much rather be at Washington, Michigan, than in Washington, DC, right now—that I can tell you. [Cheers]
The bottom line: Watch for big debate whether to end the dinner as we know it, and whether some news organizations announce they will no longer attend.
The fallout after the correspondents’ dinner was intense. The clip of me staring at Wolf as she trashed me played over and over on TV for days. I felt like everywhere I turned, it was on. I did my first interview after the dinner on Fox & Friends and said, “That evening says a whole lot more about her than it does about me. I am very proud of the fact that I work in this administration for this president, and we’re going to keep pushing forward.”
I am well aware that I am not perfect—far from it. I made mistakes in the White House, but I learned from those mistakes and got better. I was committed to my job, loyal to the president, and determined to serve the country I love. Being the White House press secretary for President Trump was a tough job. In the darkest moments I questioned how much more our family could endure and at what cost. But knowing that I had the president’s trust, a loyal team fighting with me, a family who loved me, and a faith that defined me and gave me purpose made the worst days manageable. Through it all, I learned to put my trust more completely in God, who even in the midst of tremendous adversity is always in control. And if God is willing to forgive me, again and again, unconditionally, for my mistakes—surely I can extend that same grace to others. I was not going to be consumed with anger or bitterness at my critics and I sure as hell was not going to be a victim. I’d have to trust in God and keep fighting.