Hideous peas in a pod. Getty Image
Like fetid sludge seeping from a clogged storm drain, former White House Press Secretary and Wicked Witch of the Lies Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the first Trump accomplice to announce she's running for office, in her case as governor of Arkansas. Sanders, who took over from Sean Spicer in July 2017, spent most of the next two years shamelessly, relentlessly, belligerently shilling for a sociopath, endlessly spewing lies to a press she clearly, truly despised as the enemy of the people even though she was, umm, the press secretary. As the brutally partisan agent of a president who "transformed 'fake news' from an offhanded insult into a democratic anxiety," in the view of many she "broke the news," repeatedly using her bully (sic) pulpit to foster the idea that "facts themselves have a political bias...She has deflected, she has belittled, she has eye-rolled, she has condescended, she has obfuscated, she has misled, she has lied." Most grievously, in increasingly "gladiatorial" and then rare press conferences, she helped foster the deeply anti-democratic notion that facts don't matter as long as you win. And so - why not? - she lied: About the hush money, the jobs for African-Americans, the women Trump assaulted, the way he never encouraged violence, the "countless" FBI people "very happy" he fired Comey, the perfectly benign practice of ripping immigrant kids and babies from their parents to put them in cages - to which Stephen Colbert once responded, "There are two ways to look at the story. You can be horrified - or work for Donald Trump." Who lied even more than she did.
Evidently proud of her achievements as a loyal cog in that heinous machine, Sanders launched her run for governor Monday with a curdled, grievance-packed, fear-mongering, culture-war stoking, seven-minute-46-second video vowing to "defend your right to be free of socialism and tyranny," and warning, "With the radical left now in control of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense," and yes she really does talk that way. Starting with a soft-focus fairy tale about soldiers fawning over Trump when he visited Iraq for 20 minutes before they knew he called them "losers," she sprinkles in red-meat words - abortion, AOC, Pelosi, big government - and says she'll protect guns, religious liberty, free speech and immigrant-free cities against "Venezuelan-style socialism." You can trust her, she notes, because in her earlier gig "I took on the media, the radical left, and their 'cancel culture,' and I won." Say what? retorted Jim Acosta, who in fact often beat her at her own game and now warns, "This campaign is going to be gaslit." In one of their most memorable confrontations, Acosta asked her about Evil Elf Jeff Sessions quoting the Bible to rationalize putting kids in cages, to which Sanders sanctimoniously sneers, "It is very biblical to enforce the law." Now here she is again, telling us how "Christian" she is. Online, some seem unconvinced. How do her non-stop grievances create jobs, improve schools, provide infrastructure, "you know, the stuff governors actually need to be good at?" asks one. And, "Arkansas: If she's the answer, it must have been a really stupid question." With Sanders likely only the first in a long, dingy line of former Trumpers looking for work, Politico reports their prospects look dim, especially after the Capitol riot. Given everything that's come before, says one source, "They are really fucked." Reap what you sow.
