Ever get the feeling that President Trump, and by
extension his closest staff, can do nothing right in the eyes of the
Washington press corps? It sure seems that way when they pick apart even
sweet traditions like serving our troops on Thanksgiving or the
decorations chosen by the first lady for Christmas. But let’s be
honest, aside from the president, his female staff receive the harshest
and most dishonorable treatment.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Press
Secretary of the Trump administration, innocently baked a pie for
Thanksgiving and posted it to Instagram. It looked delicious. It
shouldn’t have been controversial – it’s a pie – but leave it to the
media to stoke conspiracy, ridiculously accusing Sanders of posting a
stock photo and labeling it #
piegate.
Seriously, this happened. Never mind that our nation is grappling
with transformative issues like tax reform or dealing with a mad
dictator in North Korea. The media focused on a pie solely because Sarah
Huckabee Sanders is a member of a presidential administration they
despise. Piegate, however, is just nothing compared to the personal
attacks. It’s shocking the depth to which they will sink, criticizing
her looks, her weight, and her accent.
Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who
makes a career of pettiness and the denigration of conservative women
(to the point of being obsessive and creepy),
wrote,
“And so, at Monday’s off-camera briefing, she stood on the podium,
frequently cocking her left eyebrow and raising the left corner of her
lips to convey displeasure at the line of questioning. Then, as
frequently, she opened her mouth and, with a heavy Arkansas twang, said a
lot of nothing.” Most recently, he railed against the “Trump
mouthpiece” for her “infantilizing of the press corps” by asking them to
say what they are thankful for before submitting a question. The tone
of the article went downhill from there.
In at time when we are watching the
freak show of frat boy behavior unfold in the media, it’s refreshing to
watch Sanders handle her job with poise, refusing to engage in futile,
useless, and childish behavior.
A
piece earlier this year by Pulitzer prize-winning Los Angeles Time
s’
columnist David Horsey was so nasty they were forced to take down. In
it, he called Sanders a litany of things I’d rather not write here.
His comment about being Sanders being a “soccer mom”
was particularly disgusting, because he not only denigrated Sanders but
implied that soccer moms in general have nothing else to do but bake
cookies and wear running shoes. It was an unnecessarily mean.
And do I even need to mention the
childish, expletive-packed rant by Wonkette Senior Editor Evan Hurst, who apparently has never met an F-bomb he didn’t like?
Comedian Chelsea Handler
wrote
last year that we need to “find women that are different than you and
figure out the things you have in common. We have a whole generation of
girls who are looking at us to see how we treat each other…” Yet just
this week she
railed against Sanders, choosing to describe her with crass and rude language. Some role model you are, Ms. Handler.
Beyond bad form.
Sanders arguably has one of the toughest jobs in the
entire administration as Trump’s press secretary. The White House press
secretary must have a grasp of every major and most minor issues on any
given day and be able to articulate a concise and coherent answer to a
group of people who, for the most part, want to destroy her boss.
The job requires calm under intense pressure. I have
yet to see Sanders lose her cool, even when faced with difficult,
ridiculous, or from-left-field questions posed by members of the press
over and over again. She’s also funny,
exclaiming, “Christmas had come early” when alerted to the fact that CNN was boycotting the White House Christmas party.
The White House press corps were not amused.
Dana Perino, who served as press secretary under
President George W. Bush, was only one of two female press secretaries
in history (Sanders is the third). She wrote an
open letter
to Sanders at the beginning of her tenure, urging her to be the “most
knowledgeable person in the room” and to “take a moment of gratitude”
when walking into the West Wing.
Sanders does even more than that. She reads from a
Christian devotional and says a prayer
before entering the press briefing room and meeting the press. This is a
woman who is grounded in her faith, understands her position, and
executes her responsibilities well. On some days it’s a lions den.
One would think that the feminist members of the media
would be thrilled to see a courageous woman place another crack in the
glass ceiling of power and influence but not so much. Sanders has faced
a barrage of negativity from the very people who handled the Obama
administration with kid gloves.
In at time when we are watching the freak show of frat
boy behavior unfold in the media, it’s refreshing to watch Sanders
handle her job with poise, refusing to engage in futile, useless, and
childish behavior. The left will never give her a fair shake, and
feminists seem to find her a dangerous threat to their demands for
fealty from women.
That’s OK; she doesn’t need their acclaim. Young,
aspiring professional women love her. Conservative moms at home cheer
her on when she is at the podium. People of faith pray for her.
Sanders doesn’t need your approval or even ours, because she plays to an audience of One even more powerful than Donald Trump.
Penny Young Nance is president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest women’s public policy organization. She is the author of the book "Feisty and Feminine: A Rallying Cry for Conservative Women" (Zondervan 2016).