It finally happened. Sarah Sanders is leaving the Trump administration.
“After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas”, an already nostalgic Donald Trump tweeted, on Thursday afternoon.
Unlike so many other administration officials who, despite having sacrificed their reputations and doomed themselves to the wrong side of history, were promptly thrown under the bus by the president upon their departure, Trump had nothing but effusive praise to offer.
“She is a very special person with extraordinary talents”, Trump gushed.
And he wasn’t done. “I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas”, he said, handing out a presidential endorsement as a parting gift, as if that somehow makes up for the fact that Sanders was forced to be the propaganda poster girl for the most dishonest administration in the history of the republic.
Trump continued, insisting that Sarah would make a “fantastic” governor. He then thanked her “for job well done!”
“I am blessed and forever grateful to Donald Trump for the opportunity to serve and proud of everything he’s accomplished”, Sanders tweeted, adding the following:
I love the President and my job. The most important job I’ll ever have is being a mom to my kids and it’s time for us to go home. Thank you Mr. President!
CNN subsequently reported that Sanders is in fact considering a run for governor of Arkansas when the seat opens in 2022. According to two people familiar with her thinking, Sarah believes running for office would be “a good next move.”
Write your own jokes.
To be clear, Sanders will not be missed. She was instrumental in force-feeding lies and misinformation to the American public. No matter how many memoirs she writes and no matter how successful the inevitable “I’m really sorry” book tour ends up being, Sanders will never be exonerated in the court of public opinion for her role in perpetuating the current state of affairs, wherein large swaths of the voting public can no longer differentiate between lies and truth.
She also aided and abetted Trump in his efforts to brand the press “enemy of the people”, although she was, at times, reluctant to use that phrase herself.
But Sanders won’t be missed for another reason: Through the end of May, she hadn’t held a press briefing in more than 70 days, making her the all-time record holder in that regard. It’s pretty hard to miss somebody who went into hiding months ago. Of course, that’s not entirely fair. She wasn’t exactly “hiding”. During that same briefing-less stretch, she showed up on Fox at least a dozen times.
(As an aside, a trenchant analysis shows Sanders was not, in fact, as remarkable as the media makes her out to be.)
There is perhaps no better send-off than the following classic May 15 tweet from CNN’s Maegan Vazquez, who noted that the lectern in the briefing room had begun to gather dust in Sarah’s absence.
https://twitter.com/maeganvaz/status/1128789925791502338
I’d like to point out that it was 2.5 years. Trump is just that bad at math. Or he’s lying to inflate people’s perception of how long his underlings last? Who knows.
“It was all for you, Damien!”