Sarah Sanders leaving White House press job
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, whose tenure was marked by a breakdown in regular press briefings and questions about the administration’s credibility, as well as her own, will leave her post at the end of the month, President Donald Trump announced Thursday.
Trump said he’s encouraging her to run for governor when she returns home to Arkansas, where her father, Mike Huckabee, once held the governor’s seat.
Sanders is one of Trump’s closest and most trusted White House aides and one of the few remaining who worked on his campaign, taking on the job of advocating for and defending a president who had his own unconventional ideas about how to conduct the people’s business.
At an unrelated White House event, Trump described Sanders as a “warrior” as he called her to the stage. Sanders, appearing emotional, said serving Trump has been “the honor of a lifetime” and pledged to remain one of his “most outspoken and loyal supporters.”
Sanders, who is married and has three young children, later told reporters she wanted to spend more time with her family, but did not rule out running for public office.
“I learned a long time ago never to rule anything out,” said Sanders, 36. She was the first working mother and just the third woman to be named White House press secretary.
Under her roughly two-year tenure as chief spokeswoman for the White House, daily televised briefings led by the press secretary became a relic of the past after Sanders repeatedly sparred with reporters who aggressively questioned her about administration policy, the investigation into possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia or any number of controversies involving the White House.
Sanders has not held a formal briefing since March 11 — more than three months ago — and said she does not regret the decision to scale them back. Instead, reporters were left to catch her and other administration officials on the White House driveway after their interviews with Fox News Channel and other networks.
Trump also has made it a habit to regularly answer reporters’ questions in a variety of settings, most notably on the South Lawn before boarding the Marine One helicopter. Sanders often sought to justify the lack of formal briefings by saying they were unnecessary when journalists could hear from Trump directly.
Her credibility has also come under question since she succeeded Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary, in mid-2017.
The Russia report released by special counsel Robert Mueller in April revealed that Sanders admitted to investigators that she had made an unfounded claim about “countless” FBI agents reaching out to express support for Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.
Sanders characterized the comment as a “slip of the tongue” uttered in the “heat of the moment.”
Sanders told reporters Thursday that she had informed Trump earlier in the day of her decision to step down. Sanders said she hasn’t discussed possible replacements with Trump.
