Speaking for Myself

by Sarah Huckabee Sanders

  The media has attacked me personally on a number of occasions, including your own network; said I should be harassed as a life sentence; that I should be choked.… When I was hosted by the Correspondents’ Association, of which almost all of you are members, you brought a comedian up to attack my appearance and called me a traitor to my own gender.… In fact … as far as I know, I’m the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required Secret Service protection.… The media continues to ratchet up the verbal assault against the president and everyone in this administration, and certainly we have a role to play, but the media has a role to play for the discourse in this country as well.

  After my briefing, Rush Limbaugh weighed in on his radio show: “Amen! This woman is great. She is fearless!” Rush was a legend and a hero in the conservative movement, and his support meant a lot to me. I watched Hannity with the president on Air Force One later that evening and he pointed at me and said, “You were amazing today. You were so tough that I’ll have to be even harder on them at my rally tonight … it wouldn’t be right to let you be tougher!” He laughed and then said to the group, “My Sarah—she is beautiful. I love her, the first lady loves her.” The staff in the room on Air Force One applauded.

  On my first day with Secret Service detail I was escorted in a black SUV to the White House. I had grown up in the Governor’s Mansion with my dad’s Arkansas State Police security detail and after a year and a half at the White House I had spent a lot of time around the men and women of the Secret Service, but this was something I hadn’t really anticipated when I took a job in the Trump White House. There were roughly a dozen agents who were part of the detail assigned to me. They rotated time with me, but someone was with me twenty-four hours a day and someone at my house twenty-four hours a day as well. It took some getting used to but I was thankful for their protection. The team assigned to me could not have been nicer or more gracious. I am pretty sure when they signed up to be part of the USSS that protecting the press secretary was not high on their wish list of assignments. My kids thought it was the greatest thing in the world to ride around with the agents and ask them thousands of questions—I often teased them that we were planning a cross-country family road trip. The agents laughed but I am pretty sure they were requesting transfers on the off chance it might happen! I came to be friends with the team that was with me. I joked with them about their inability to find decent music on the radio, and my kids and I baked them cookies as they sat guard outside our home. We tried to make them feel welcome and let them know how much we appreciated their service. Their presence made us feel safe and because they were there we started getting out again. Our family will be forever grateful for the kindness and the protection the agents showed us.

  It was not a good feeling to be kicked out of a restaurant in front of my family or to need Secret Service protection because of violent threats made against me, but I was determined not to be angry or bitter about it. One of the most important things about being a Christian is recognizing that God loves us no matter what. Nothing we do can ever change the fact that God loves us unconditionally. Only by recognizing this beautiful truth about God’s love for us—to the point of His Son’s death on the cross—can we find it within ourselves to love others unconditionally as well. America is divided, and we must look to God and start loving and forgiving each other—particularly those who don’t deserve it. None of us deserve God’s love either but He loves us anyway. I wouldn’t have made it long as White House press secretary if I carried the burden of anger and hate in my heart toward those who attacked and persecuted me. My faith liberated me to face the liberal mob with a spirit of love and forgiveness and stay focused on doing my job.

  On that first day with Secret Service protection, the agents escorted me to the entrance to the West Wing and I walked to my office. Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any crazier, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, setting up one of the administration’s biggest fights yet for the future of the Supreme Court.

  I sat in the Oval Office as the president called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The president told McConnell he was committed to picking a nominee from the list of conservative judges he promised to choose from during the campaign. McConnell said he favored Judge Amul Thapar from his home state of Kentucky, who served on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, but was comfortable with anyone on the president’s list.

  * * *

  The next day the president met with Senators Chuck Grassley, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, and Heidi Heitkamp to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy, and internally the president and our team agreed on a plan to strike quickly. The president would interview the candidates on his short list over the weekend, decide on the nominee, and announce his pick on the Monday after the Fourth of July weekend. I announced the SCOTUS nomination team, led by White House Counsel Don McGahn; Raj Shah, my principal deputy who was taking a leave from the press team; and Justin Clarke, who had been running intergovernmental affairs and then the office of public liaison. I briefed that afternoon and said the president was considering candidates to fill the vacancy “who have the right intellect, the right temperament, and will uphold the Constitution.” The president met with each of the final SCOTUS candidates, including Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals Judge Raymond Kethledge. He was definitely leaning toward Kavanaugh throughout the process, but also liked Judge Barrett on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The president asked me several times who I liked. I said I liked all three but was partial to Barrett, the young, conservative mother of seven, but added that Kavanaugh might be easier to confirm. I guess you could say I misread that one—but there’s no telling what crazy lies Democrats would have manufactured about her!

  On Monday, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. He told me his decision, a closely guarded secret, earlier that day ahead of the 9:00 p.m. prime-time announcement. I spent the afternoon working with the nomination team getting prepared with a bio, talking points, and surrogates. I spent an hour on the phone calling through all of the major networks to get them ready to take the announcement live from the White House. As the clock struck 9:00 p.m., I turned to the president, gave him the cue, and said, “It’s time,” and he walked out and introduced Brett, his wife, and daughters to the nation. The country watched as Brett talked about his family and being his daughter’s basketball coach. Because Kavanaugh had worked in a senior position in the Bush administration there were a number of former Bush staffers in the crowd, something you didn’t see all that often in the Trump White House. It was standing room only and there was tremendous excitement over the nomination. Brett had impeccable legal credentials, had been vetted several times, was a great husband and father, and a man his friends and coworkers seemed to genuinely like and respect. Most conservatives believed Kavanaugh was a slam dunk.

  But from day one, Democrats and the liberal mob were hell-bent on defeating Kavanaugh’s nomination at all costs. Sure enough, out of nowhere, the first Kavanaugh accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, went public. To prepare for the Senate confirmation hearings, members of the White House communications and counsel’s staff murder-boarded Kavanaugh in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. I played the role of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and along with others fired tough questions at Kavanaugh:

  “Did you ever attend a party with the accuser?”

  “Did you ever black out drinking in high school?”

  During the first round of questions Kavanaugh was nervous and sounded too scripted. Our team of questioners was relentless. Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Bill Shine made him crack first and you saw a glint of real anger in his response. Bill asked when he had lost his virginity and when he first had sex with his wife. It was uncomfortable for everyone in the room, but we knew there was no subject matter
too degrading or too humiliating for the Democrats to ask him about. Here was someone who had been praised as a man of high integrity and character, and here we were, many of us only having met him once or twice for a few minutes, interrogating him about the most intimate details of his personal life. We had to do it. It was the only way to get him prepared for the hearings. To throw him off and make him angry, I interrupted his response about the impact of these accusations on his family and said, “With all due respect, Judge, you think you’re the victim here? An innocent woman said you sexually assaulted her. Explain to me why you’re the victim?” Kavanaugh got angry, teared up, and said, “You ask my daughters about that.” By the last half of the prep I felt a little better but still worried how it would all play out and how Brett would withstand the merciless attacks from the Senate Democrats.

  I did Good Morning America and Fox & Friends to make the case for Kavanaugh. Another woman, represented by attorney and soon-to-be-disgraced-felon Michael Avenatti, accused Kavanaugh of drugging and gang-raping her and other women in high school. It was preposterous—a new, desperate low from the liberal mob. Later in the day the gang-rape accuser’s ex-boyfriend—a registered Democrat—came forward to say he had to file a restraining order against her. He told Politico: “Right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife, and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time.… I know a lot about her.… She’s not credible at all.”

  I traveled with the president to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, and in between bilateral meetings with foreign leaders, we waited in a holding room. I talked to Raj, who had sat in for Kavanaugh’s first interview with Martha MacCallum of Fox News. The interview had been pretaped, and included Brett’s wife, Ashley, as well. Raj walked me through the highlights of the interview to pass along to the president, including a few details that were a bit uncomfortable for me to share with him, like when Kavanaugh had sex for the first time. The president told me to get Kavanaugh on the phone, and said to him, “Brett, I heard the interview went well. Hang in there. I am with you all the way. Keep fighting.”

  I did The Today Show from New York, and when pushed about how I felt personally about the accusations against Kavanaugh as a woman and as a mom, I said, “I’m often asked about being a parent. ‘Sarah, you have a daughter.’ I also have two sons, and I wouldn’t want a false accusation to be what determines the rest of their life.”

  I flew back on Air Force One to Washington, watching Dr. Ford testify before the Senate with the president, and then joined the president on Marine One to fly to the White House. Kavanaugh categorically denied the allegations and in a powerful moment, he shared that his young daughter suggested their family pray for Dr. Ford. “That’s a lot of wisdom from a ten-year-old,” Kavanaugh said, on the verge of tears.

  After Kavanaugh’s opening statement I called the president and said, “Kavanaugh just saved himself.”

  “Did you cry?” the president asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it,” the president said. “You’re softer than people think.” He laughed.

  “Did you cry?” I asked him.

  “You know I’m not a crier,” he said. “But I’m not going to answer that.”

  We could sense the tide turning for Kavanaugh, and later in the hearing Senator Lindsey Graham eviscerated the Senate Democrats.

  “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020.… When you see Sotomayor and Kagan, tell them that Lindsey said hello because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you’ve done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy!

  “Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham. That you knew about it and you held it. You had no intention of protecting Dr. Ford; none.

  “She’s as much of a victim as you are. God, I hate to say it because these have been my friends. But let me tell you, when it comes to this, you’re looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend.

  “Would you say you’ve been through hell?” Graham asked.

  “I’ve been through hell and then some,” Kavanaugh said.

  “The one thing I can tell you you should be proud of—Ashley, you should be proud of this—that you raised a daughter who had the good character to pray for Dr. Ford,” Graham said.

  “To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.…

  “I hope you’re on the Supreme Court, that’s exactly where you should be.”

  It was a standout assertion by Graham and one of the biggest moments of the hearing. Graham, who had not always been popular among conservatives or Trump voters, was now celebrated as a hero.

  After the hearing, I drafted a statement with the team for the president, and he made a few revisions, then fired it off: “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting. Democrats’ search- and-destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!”

  I went on Fox News Sunday to make the case for Kavanaugh and did a press briefing from the White House:

  “On the night President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Senator Schumer declared the Democrats would oppose this nomination with everything they had. Before a single document was produced, a single meeting with the senator, or a hearing was ever scheduled, Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats telegraphed a strategy to throw the kitchen sink at the Judge with no regard for the process, decency, or standards. They’re not opposed to Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial views; they’re literally trying to undercut the voice of the American people when they elected Donald Trump.

  They have questioned his legitimacy, and casually tossed around vicious accusations of perjury—all false and baseless. But now they’ve sunk lower, as they sprang these 11th-hour accusations and a full-scale assault on Judge Kavanaugh’s integrity.

  This is a coordinated smear campaign. No evidence, no independent corroboration, just smears. Here are just a few of the examples:

  Chuck Schumer said, and I quote, “There’s no presumption of innocence or guilt.” Chris Coons, who sits on the committee, said Kavanaugh, and I quote, “now bears the burden of disproving these allegations, rather than Dr. Ford and Ms. Ramirez.” Mazie Hirono, who also sits on the Committee, said that Judge Kavanaugh does not deserve the presumption of innocence because of his judicial views.

  One thing is clear: Democrats want to block Kavanaugh and hold the seat open until the 2020 election. This is about politics and this is about power—pure and simple. And they’ve destroyed Judge Kavanaugh’s reputation, undermined Dr. Ford’s privacy, and tried to upend our traditions of innocence until proven guilty in the process. It’s a complete and total disgrace.

  We will receive and submit the FBI’s supplemental background investigation on his nomination to the Senate. As Leader McConnell said, Judge Kavanaugh deserves a prompt vote and we expect him to get one.

  After my briefing, I returned to my office to find Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Bill Shine, Jared Kushner, Director of Presidential Personnel Johnny DeStefano, and Raj Shah all there waiting for me. They applauded as I walked in.

  On Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski said I was “rotten to the core” for defending Kavanaugh. White House Communications Director Bill Shine, furious at the nastiness from some of the MSNBC anchors toward women in the Trump administration, called Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC. Shine told Griffin that the White House wasn’t going to put anyone from the administration on MSNBC or NBC until further notice, saying, “You’re not going to continue harassing women in the White House this way.”

  “Sarah hit a nerve over here,” said
Griffin.

  “You hit a f—— nerve over here!” Shine yelled and hung up the phone.

  I did Fox News’s America’s Newsroom and said, “We stand 100 percent with Brett Kavanaugh.… It’s time for the Senate to vote.”

  In the Oval after that appearance, the president told Kelly it was time to give me a raise. Kelly laughed and reminded him that as “assistants to the president” we’d already hit our pay ceiling as senior White House officials.

  The next day the president traveled to Mississippi to do a rally for Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was running in a special election for the US Senate. Up until this point the president and Republican leaders had been fairly diplomatic in their statements about the Kavanaugh accusers and the process. But the president had had enough. At his rally the president questioned the credibility of the Ford testimony. He pointed out all the questions she couldn’t answer and that there was no one to corroborate her story. The crowd roared with approval. They’d had enough, too. It was a galvanizing moment. Republicans—including many Bush administration officials and former Never Trumpers—rallied behind Kavanaugh and were proud of the president for loyally sticking with him.

  Ahead of the vote, Senator McConnell took to the Senate floor and said:

  Nobody is supposed to be guilty until proven innocent in the United States of America.… Who among us would not have been outraged by having a lifetime record dragged through the mud with accusations that could not be proven.…

  So, let’s reclaim this moment for what it should be—a chance to elevate a stunningly talented and impressive jurist to an important office for which he is so well-qualified.… We have a chance to do good here and to underscore the basic tenent of fairness in our country. So I filed cloture on the nomination yesterday evening. And I will be proud to vote to advance this nomination tomorrow.