Speaking for Myself

by Sarah Huckabee Sanders

  Tonight was no different. The president asked me about the press traveling with us and whether news of the trip had leaked. I reassured him all was clear. During our conversation the first lady and Stephanie Grisham walked in from the president and first lady’s bedroom behind his office.

  This was the first time I had seen the first lady since I released a statement announcing her plans to return from Mar-a-Lago to Washington to be with the president on Christmas due to the shutdown. The first lady is strong, smart, independent, funny, and incredibly warm. She gets no credit for the great job she has done nor for how tough she is. I have often said if the first lady—an immigrant who has lived the American dream—was married to a Democrat president she would be one of the most celebrated first ladies in history. One thing I know to never do is to speak on her behalf. She has a very capable team and likes to handle her own statements and releases. Unfortunately, that hadn’t crossed my mind when the president had called me a few days before the trip and told me to release a statement letting the world know his plan to stay in Washington during the shutdown and the first lady’s plan to join him. After I released the statement I heard from Grisham, who let me know they were not too thrilled I’d done it without giving them the heads-up. I knew I had messed up, but figured in time everyone would forget about it. Wrong again. At Andrews, Grisham had once again given me a hard time about my statement.

  So when I saw the first lady in the president’s cabin on Air Force One I tried to lightheartedly clear the air: “I got in a little trouble with your team for the statement announcing your return to Washington.…” I smiled, pointed at her husband, and said, “Just so you know, he made me do it.”

  The president said, “Oh, come on! It was a beautiful statement … I love how we made it sound like you needed to rush back to be by my side.” He laughed hysterically, and (a bit nervously) so did I. The president didn’t let up: “Melania … you have the best life. How could you ever go on without me?”

  “Actually, Donald … you’d be the one who could never go on without me. You’d be a total mess. Leaving me message after message, begging ‘Call me back! Call me back! Please, Melania, call me back!’” In triumph, she laughed. The president did, too, loving the banter and knowing she was right. (Message for the husbands out there: your wife always is.) The president needs Melania and frankly so does the country. The president is more relaxed around the first lady and the staff is always glad when she travels with him. We were especially thankful she was here tonight. She was such a positive force and had far more influence than most realized.

  We spent the next several hours talking, working, playing cards, and trying to sleep.

  Nearly twelve hours later in the pitch-black of the night, with no lights on the plane or the runway, we landed at Al Asad Airbase in the war-torn Anbar province of western Iraq. We quickly unloaded into vehicles and as we drove away and looked back Air Force One was barely visible in the desert darkness.

  The president and first lady entered the dining hall filled with a hodgepodge of Christmas decorations. Hundreds of troops had gathered, thinking they were about to be joined for dinner by some of the generals leading the battle against ISIS. Instead, they got their commander in chief. The room erupted. The men and women of our armed forces were spending Christmas away from their families and instead spending it with the First Family.

  The president and first lady went by each table individually thanking the troops and wished them a Merry Christmas. A member of the US Army told the president he rejoined the military because of him, and the president said, “And I am here because of you.” When the president moved to the next table, the soldier walked over to me and said, “Thank you, Sarah. I love the way you handle yourself. You have a tough job.”

  I politely corrected him and said, “Thank you, but what I do is nothing compared to the sacrifice you make. You’re halfway around the world risking your life for the rest of us. That’s a tough job.”

  The US Army soldier silently reached up, tore the Brave Rifles patch representing the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from his arm, and handed it to me. “We’re in this together. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  Overwhelmed with emotion and speechless, I just hugged him. I probably held on for longer than I should have, and walked away with tears in my eyes more grateful than ever for the brave men and women of our armed forces. Their selfless sacrifice represents the best of America. I still can’t think about this night and not feel the tears well up, and it’s a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. I keep the patch on my desk in my office to remind me of their sacrifice. I later found out that the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq had been led by my good friend General H. R. McMaster from 2004 to 2005. He said it was one of his greatest achievements in the military.

  * * *

  Standing outside a massive hangar packed with American heroes, the president wore an army green bomber jacket and signature red tie. Alongside the president stood the first lady, in a mustard-colored jacket and army green pants. They walked into the hangar and up onto the stage with a gigantic camo net and American flag backdrop as hundreds of troops shouted “USA! USA! USA!” I looked around. Every race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and political party must have been represented in the room but in that moment everyone was united as Americans.

  After being on the ground for well over an hour there had still been no leaks, but it was time to tell the world. The reporters traveling with us were desperate to file their stories and it was killing them to have to wait. We had made it nearly impossible for anyone to post on social media, text friends, or send emails by shutting down all the cell signals at the base. We finally opened the signal and as the president addressed the troops I announced: “President Trump and the first lady traveled to Iraq late on Christmas night to visit with our troops and senior military leadership to thank them for their service, their success, and their sacrifice.”

  Just six days before the trip, on December 19, the president declared that US forces would withdraw from Syria. The president’s decision was met with immense pushback, including from some Republican lawmakers and even some officials inside the administration, like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. The president had campaigned on and long pledged to get America out of endless wars and bring our troops home, but some Republicans apparently didn’t expect him to follow through and actually do it.

  I have sat with the president in the Oval Office as he made calls to family members after their sons were killed in action. As a mom, I imagined being on the other end of that line. It is heart-wrenching, each call more difficult than the last, and you can see the physical and emotional toll it takes on the president. He’s said it’s the hardest part of the job. After one of these calls, the president hung up, looked at me, and said, “My, Sarah, it’s so awful. These beautiful kids never come back. Their parents are so crushed. I never want another brave American to be killed in somebody else’s civil war.”

  These were some of the rare instances I saw the president fully let his guard down, show his heart, and be completely vulnerable. President Trump isn’t perfect, he isn’t always easy, but he loves the American people and is willing to fight for them even if that means fighting alone.

  Unfortunately, the right answer to ending the long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the broader Middle East wasn’t always clear.

  President Trump strongly opposed the war in Iraq. But he also understood the dangers of pulling out. After all, it was the disastrous withdrawal of American forces by President Obama and Vice President Biden that gave rise to the ISIS caliphate in the first place.

  At the height of its power during the Obama administration, the ISIS caliphate controlled territory the size of Florida or New York. ISIS terrorists raped women and children, crucified Christians and other religious minorities, and slaughtered and dumped the bodies of innocent civilians in mass graves. President Obama’s reference to ISIS as the “JV team” notwithstanding, ISIS directed
or inspired terrorist attacks around the globe, including the senseless and vicious murder of forty-nine people inside a gay nightclub in Orlando in June 2016.

  Fast-forward two years under the leadership of President Trump, and our great military was crushing ISIS, their caliphate in ruins. But as President Trump addressed US troops at Al Asad, thousands of ISIS terrorists still held territory deep inside Syria, refusing to surrender.

  The president entered a tent where two large eight-foot tables were pushed together to create a meeting space. At the table were some of the top American military officials leading the fight against ISIS. President Trump took a seat at the head of the table. The first lady and Bolton joined him. Scavino, Miller, Walsh, Grisham, Luna, and I stood next to the table and listened as a decisive moment in the battle against ISIS and the future of America’s role in the Middle East unfolded.

  After introductions, the president got straight to the point: “What do you need to win?” None of the military leaders at the table pushed back on the president’s decision to pull troops out of Syria; instead, they recommended using troops from Iraq to complete the mission.

  Major General J. Daniel Caine said, “This base is closer to what’s left of ISIS than our base in Syria. We can finish off the caliphate easier and faster from here.”

  The president, anxious to bring our brave men and women home, asked, “How long will it take?”

  “A matter of weeks.”

  Stunned, the president asked, “Then why haven’t we done it yet?”

  “Mr. President, those are not our orders from our commanding officer.”

  “They are now!”

  The president unleashed our military to finish off the ISIS caliphate, and if necessary, kill ’em all.

  It was classic Trump.

  The president loves talking to people in the trenches doing the actual work to find out the solution to a problem. I suspect it’s from years of talking to foremen and workers at job sites around the world. Over the course of the last three years I’ve watched the president go straight to the source for ideas, whether it’s defeating ISIS or building the wall. The president is a hands-on, all-in person, and it works.

  On March 20, 2019, on the South Lawn of the White House just before leaving for Ohio, the president showed reporters a map with all of the territory ISIS once controlled across Iraq and Syria alongside a new map, showing the ISIS caliphate in control of no territory whatsoever. Thanks to the strong leadership of President Trump and our courageous armed forces, millions had been liberated and the evil ISIS caliphate had been wiped off the face of the earth.

  Leaving Iraq on Air Force One en route home, I called Bryan, and the kids to tell them I was safe and I loved them. I got a few hours of sleep on the floor in the conference room of the plane before we touched down back at Andrews right as the sun was coming up. In less than forty-eight hours, I had gone from opening gifts with my family under the Christmas tree to Iraq and back. I drove home exhausted yet exhilarated from the trip, thankful to God for the courageous heroes of our military who keep us free. I knew my kids would just be getting up, and with no energy to make them breakfast I hit the McDonald’s drive-through and arrived back home to Bryan and the kids with Egg McMuffins and pancakes, concluding just another not-so-normal day in the life of working for President Trump.

  It was moments like this, in the quiet of the morning, that I wondered how I’d made it so far, and prayed I’d always remain grateful for the opportunity and live up to the responsibility that came with it.

  2

  Arkansas

  In May 1996, the Whitewater scandal threatening the Clinton presidency upended Arkansas politics. Arkansas’s Democratic governor Jim Guy Tucker was convicted of fraud as part of Ken Starr’s investigation into the Clintons, and announced he would resign effective July 15. My family at the time was living in Texarkana—a two-hour drive south of Little Rock, the state’s capital—but the Whitewater scandal upended our lives, too.

  My dad had been a pastor and had run a small Christian communications business for most of my early life until he got involved in politics. In 1992, he resigned as the pastor of Beech Street Baptist Church, a traditional Southern Baptist church in Texarkana, to run against Democratic US senator Dale Bumpers. Senator Bumpers had been in office for decades and was widely popular, while my dad was virtually unknown in political circles.

  Republicans in Arkansas had only won three statewide races since Reconstruction in the 1870s, and 1992 was definitely not the year to be a Republican on the ballot in my state. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton won the presidency, and my dad lost his Senate race. He got 40 percent of the vote, which was better than many expected a Republican could do, but nowhere near enough to win. My parents put everything, including mortgaging our home, on the line for that race. We had worked hard and campaigned all over the state. It was a devastating loss and a hard time for our family.

  God closed the door on the US Senate but opened another. Bill Clinton’s rise from governor to president meant Democratic lieutenant governor Jim Guy Tucker became governor, and there was a special election held to fill the vacancy for lieutenant governor. My dad threw his hat in the ring against Nate Coulter, senator Bumpers’s campaign manager and an attorney for President Clinton. Despite an all-out effort run out of the Clinton White House to defeat him, my dad pulled off a huge upset and narrowly won the race, 51 to 49 percent. The Clinton White House and their Democratic allies back in Arkansas weren’t too happy about the result, to put it mildly.

  As a way to welcome my dad to the capitol as the new lieutenant governor, the Clinton Democratic machine zeroed out his office budget and literally nailed his door shut. For fifty-nine days my dad wasn’t allowed to physically occupy his office in the capitol simply because he was a Republican. John Fund, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal at the time, didn’t believe this could actually happen in America and flew to Little Rock to see for himself. He was astonished to report that it was in fact true.

  Three years later, in the summer of 1996, Arkansas Democrats’ worst nightmare was coming true: a small-town former pastor with no money or ties to the political establishment named Mike Huckabee (a “deplorable,” as Hillary Clinton might put it) was now going to be the Republican governor of President Bill Clinton’s home state, Arkansas.

  Unfortunately, my worst nightmare—moving away from home at thirteen years old from the small town I loved to the state capital the summer before my freshman year of high school—was also coming true.

  I was happy in Texarkana. I had gone to preschool and kindergarten there at the church where my dad was the pastor. We rode to school each morning together and I played in his office until it was time to go to class. I had my own “office” under the credenza of my dad’s desk where I kept paper, markers, tape, and a pair of scissors so I could work each morning alongside him. I loved being around my dad, and made many masterpieces and memories working under his desk at Beech Street.

  My brothers and I enjoyed being the “pastor’s kids” and running wild around the church. We played hide-and-seek in the Sunday school classrooms, snuck into the fellowship hall for ice cream, and on more than one occasion may have taken a swim in the baptistry. When my dad had had enough of us, we’d ride our bikes around our neighborhood and make forts in the woods behind our house with the dozens of other kids who lived on our street. We even created a neighborhood newspaper, which we printed on the computer we got for Christmas when I was eight. I was responsible for a couple of sections of the newspaper each week and I am proud to report we never printed any fake news!

  Life in Texarkana wasn’t grand, but it was good. So when it came time to move to the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, I said to my parents, “I’m thirteen and old enough to take care of myself. I’ll just stay here and live with some friends instead.” That didn’t go over too well, and soon I was packing up, saying good-bye, and taking every chance I got to let my parents know how much they were “ruinin
g my life!”

  Meanwhile, Governor Jim Guy Tucker spent his final days in office appointing hundreds of Democrats to state boards and commissions and spending the last of the entire year’s budget to make sure my dad knew he wasn’t welcome in the state capital.

  July 15 finally came. A Republican hadn’t been governor of Arkansas in many years so hundreds of people traveled from all corners of the state to Little Rock. It was a big deal. My mom picked out outfits for each of us. Many years later I still have not forgiven her for the one she chose for me—a red, white, and blue one-piece suit complete with shorts and shoulder pads. Clearly she was trying to ruin my social life in Little Rock before we’d even unpacked!

  We left our hotel room and went to the capitol, where we sat in my dad’s lieutenant governor’s office waiting to receive Tucker’s resignation letter making it official. Surrounded by a few staffers and friends my dad instead got a phone call. On the other end of the line was Tucker. I was right next to my dad’s side throughout the call. I distinctly remember telling the room to be quiet as my dad listened to the voice on the other end. At that moment, Governor Tucker had already announced his resignation effective July 15. Hundreds of my dad’s supporters filled the halls of the capitol awaiting the swearing-in and inauguration. Our family had sold our house and packed everything we owned in Texarkana onto moving trucks to be delivered to the Governor’s Mansion the next day. And I had sacrificed all of my dignity wearing that red, white, and blue monstrosity my mom forced me to put on for the big day.

  We definitely weren’t prepared when Governor Tucker—five minutes prior to his scheduled resignation—informed my dad that he had changed his mind and would not officially step down after all. Governor Tucker said that the Arkansas law stating that a convicted felon could not serve as governor was vague, so he’d wait out a court ruling on his appeal.