‘Were you lying?’ Sanders faces new credibility questions
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is facing a barrage of questions about whether she purposely misled the American people amid fallout over Rudy Giuliani’s stunning revelation about hush money paid by President Donald Trump’s lawyer to a porn star who alleges a tryst with Trump. “Again, I gave you the best information that I had,” Sanders said over and over again Thursday in response to questions about why the White House failed to disclose that Trump had reimbursed his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000 payment to keep Stormy Daniels quiet. “Were you lying to us at the time? Or were you in the dark?” one reporter asked. It was an awkward position for Sanders, who is tasked with speaking on behalf of the American president. It also highlighted the difficulty the White House communications office has had in navigating an unpredictable and free-wheeling president. “As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump tweeted last year. Sanders on Thursday had to acknowledge that Giuliani hadn’t given her a heads-up that he would reveal that Trump had reimbursed Cohen. She said she didn’t know about the reimbursement at all until Giuliani’s interview Wednesday night. “I’m not part of the legal team and wouldn’t be part of those discussions,” she said when asked whether she’d been caught off guard. It was an omission by design. “They were (caught off guard). There was no way they wouldn’t be,” Giuliani told CNN on Thursday in reference to White House staffers. “The President is my client. I don’t talk to them.” Jason Miller, who has worked for both Trump and Giuliani and remains in close touch with both teams, said White House staffers shouldn’t have to deal with issues like Cohen and the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. “Finally, for the first time there’s now an external operation that’s handling such matters,” he said, describing the model as similar to the one developed during the Clinton administration as he faced impeachment hearings over his cover-up of an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. During that time, the Clinton administration developed a crisis communications team to respond to reporters’ inquiries about the scandal so that regular press staffers could focus on business as usual. But, according to former Clinton staffers, their model was very different from the one on display this week with Trump. Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary from 1998 to 2000, said the separation proved effective, but only because both sides were in constant communication. “It was actually very hugely coordinated,” he said, recalling that he spent almost as much time meeting with members of the legal team as he did political aides. “It really was the only way you could effectively communicate, when you knew what everyone was doing,” he said. “There wasn’t a communication strategy and a lawyers’ strategy. There was one strategy: a political strategy.” Michael McCurry, who was press secretary from 1994 to 1998, said that while there were significant disagreements between lawyers and communication and political staffers who came to the table with different priorities and concerns, the group was committed to working as a team. “I think it was very critical to helping President Clinton get through a difficult period,” he said. “It was a very, very delicate balance” that requires “a lot of goodwill and camaraderie.” Sanders, meanwhile, was forced to defend her credibility, a week after comedian Michelle Wolf created an uproar at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner with jokes about the press secretary, including one quip that she “burns facts” and “uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.” “Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies,” Wolf cracked. “It’s probably lies.” Many who saw the routine felt Wolf went too far. On Thursday, Sanders took issue with a reporter’s characterization that she had felt blindsided by Giuliani’s interview. “With all due respect, you actually don’t know much about me in terms of what I feel and what I don’t,” she said. Lockhart, meanwhile, said that often the hardest part of the job is “standing up there and looking like you don’t know what you’re doing, but understanding that just getting through the day and getting through the week is the best thing you can do.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Progressive ‘comedians’ have lost sight of what’s funny or decent
I found a Facebook a meme in my timeline the other day that pretty much summarizes how I feel about Michelle Wolf’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner’s (WHCD). Her supposed “comedy” act. I reposted it and went about life feeling like other pundits were saying all that needed to be said about the train-wreck that was the entertainment. Then several days later comedian Kathy Griffin decided to take back her apology for her offensive photo shoot with a mock severed head of President Donald Trump. The two instances together made me realize: Maybe the problem is that the Left has no idea what’s funny and what’s offensive. These comedians and so many others out there these days, use laughter as a way to push the boundaries of decency, and they should be called out for what they are and what they’re doing. They’re antagonists who want to take the sting out of bullying, name-calling, hate speech and yes, even at times outright violence by cloaking it as part of an “act” with a few punchlines thrown in for good measure. I often hear from pro-choice supporters that pro-choice isn’t pro-abortion. Tell that to Wolf and others like her who make the killing of the innocent unborn a joke, a one-liner in a hate filled rant. You can’t tell me that the labels pro-life and pro-choice are unfair because even though someone supports abortion they don’t support it as a normalized behavior when comedians and candidates alike act like it’s something as flippant as running a quick errand or any other minor life event. In addition to making offensive “jokes” about killing innocent babies Wolf filled several minutes of her act with hate-filled insults towards White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Calling her an “Uncle Tom” who has betrayed white women for the work she does in the White House. I don’t speak for every white woman, but I have to say that Sanders is one of the classiest people in Washington D.C. at the moment and certainly one of my favorite people in the Trump administration. Does that mean I stand by every statement that she makes? No. She has an incredibly hard job. Speaking as a communications professional there is no more challenging job than to work for someone who undermines your work constantly. Trump doesn’t understand the importance of staying on message or of using his professional communications team as his mechanism to create the narrative of what’s happening in his administration often going around them or contradicting them. Few people could do the job Sanders does with such patience, pose and professionalism, but day after day — she does. She is firm when she’s speaking for her boss and when she’s speaking as herself. Unlike Wolf, Sanders is somebody that I can show my daughter and be proud to have her look up to her. She is a mother. She relies on her faith in her decision-making. She makes incredible sacrifices to serve our country by doing her job, and she does it well. I feel sorry for Wolf. Yes, she’s getting her 15 minutes right now. I frankly never heard her name before this pathetic excuse for a comedy act. And someone who lacks the self-respect and self-awareness to recognize the way she spoke is demeaning to herself and women everywhere deserves our pity. From the jokes she made about masturbation, to abortion, to some of her other comments — clearly she is crying for help in her own life and giving her a stage to speak on was a bad decision . It’s sickening and disheartening. It is time for the White House Press Association to seriously consider what sort of image they want send to the public. This event has been on my bucket-list for years. I love what it used to be. I love that it was a night for politicos, reporters and even some Hollywood elite to get together and celebrate news and promote journalism. This year was about hate and divisiveness and that was a shame. There can be comedy without cruelty. Comedy without such divisiveness. There can be tasteful jokes. But that wasn’t the case this year in many of Michelle Wolf’s jokes. I think that was the goal of the Association and Wolf herself. It’s truly a shame. In terms of what the next steps should be. I read many suggestions the past few days. Among the best of them was to take a year off and not hold the dinner in order to reevaluate the goal and purpose of the dinner — which is supposed to be to actually raise money for college scholarships for aspiring journalists. To consider the public’s distrust of media in general and understand that a night like the WHCD does nothing to alleviate the fear’s of normal people who just want unbiased news. As for Kathy Griffin, she saw an opportunity to regain the spotlight and she took it. Her photo was offensive when it first came out and it is just as offensive now. She lost her co-hosting gig for New Years Eve last year and should never be booked by another major news outlet again. It is an affront to the American people to have anyone regardless of party be so incredibly disrespectful and distasteful with the image of the President. Enough is enough. Freedom of speech allows these women to spew their hate but the voices of the public need to make clear that we will not continue to stand for it. These two women’s comedy acts were anything but funny.
Welcome to the partisan fury, Michelle Wolf
White House Correspondents Association roaster Michelle Wolf joins a club with likes of Kathy Griffin, Khizr Khan, Stormy Daniels and David Hogg — little-known or unknown figures who suddenly became surrogates for the hyper-partisan rhetorical warfare of the Trump era. President Trump tweeted his disgust at Wolf’s weekend routine on Monday, she was a hot topic on “The View” and the subject of a long and loud CNN exchange between Chris Cuomo and a conservative official. Journalists wondered if the annual WHCA dinner should be changed or ditched. A backlash quickly surfaced. Wolf had become a political symbol, much like Parkland student Hogg when he spoke out on gun restrictions, Khan when he spoke against Trump at the Democratic National Convention, Griffin when she posted a picture of herself with a mock-up of Trump’s severed head. Trump’s supporters took up the cause. Cuomo interviewed Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, who tweeted that he and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, director of strategic communications at the White House, walked out of the dinner. A “Fox & Friends” chyron read: “Should all women be critical of Wolf’s jokes?” Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer called it a disgrace, to which Wolf tweeted: “Thank you.” But a backlash to the criticism quickly developed, with some wondering why the correspondents should be surprised to get edgy comedy from an edgy comedian. “The comedian did her job,” said Sara Haines on “The View” Monday. “She is there to push the envelope.” Don’t like it? “Hire a juggler next year,” ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel tweeted. In his interview with Schlapp, Cuomo pressed the point that many Trump opponents made: how can you be insulted by Wolf’s routine and not by some of the things that Trump has said or done? While Wolf’s performance was vulgar and unseemly, “the three-year performance of candidate and president Donald Trump has been vulgar, unseemly and infinitely more damaging to our civil discourse,” tweeted conservative commentator Bill Kristol. The White House quickly sniffed an opportunity. Trump, who held a rally in Michigan at the same time as the dinner, asked aides for an update soon after leaving the stage. When he watched it being talked about on cable TV the next day, he called several outside advisers to bash the comedian, saying she was unfunny and mean-spirited. He told at least one confidante that it again proved he can’t get a fair shake from the media and he was certain his base would agree with him Wolf, who begins a Netflix show later this month and is best known for work on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” was not made available to The Associated Press on Monday. She tweeted a few replies to critics. Her routine directed barbs at Congress, Democrats and the media. But the jokes that targeted Trump, his daughter Ivanka and press aides Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway attracted the most negative attention. Her comedy was risque; C-SPAN radio cut away from her routine over what its management called an “abundance of caution” about whether she’d violate FCC indecency guidelines. Wolf joked that Ivanka Trump had proven as useful to women as “a box of empty tampons.” She wished for a tree to fall on Conway, not so she’d get hurt — just stuck. Wolf suggested Sanders burns facts and uses the ashes to create perfect eye makeup. Margaret Talev, president of the reporters’ organization that puts on the dinner, said in a statement that she’d heard from members who expressed dismay with Wolf’s monologue. The WHCA wanted to honor free press and great reporting, “not to divide people,” Talev said. “Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.” Some reporters, notably Maggie Haberman of The New York Times in expressing support for Sanders, made their feelings known publicly. It’s not the first time comics have made people uneasy at the event, particularly since it has been televised across the country: Don Imus, Stephen Colbert and Larry Wilmore all had their critics. Trump’s absence magnified the reaction to Wolf, since no one took to the podium to punch back. Trump did so on Twitter. “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is DEAD as we know it,” he tweeted Monday. “This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for. FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night!” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
