Sarah Huckabee Sanders Says Mika Was The Bully, Not Trump (TWEETS/VIDEO)

By
Darrell Lucus
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Even by Donald Trump’s admittedly low standards, his trashing of MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski on Thursday morning was one of his most outrageous moments to date. In case you missed it, just minutes after Brzezinski called him out on “Morning Joe,” Trump claimed that he wouldn’t let Brzezinski and her co-host/fiancé, Joe Scarborough, spend New Year’s at Mar-a-Lago because she was “bleeding badly” from botched plastic surgery.


Now who would even think such an outrageously sexist statement was something that was even worth defending? Well, apparently the White House press office did. Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders spent the day trying–and failing–to convince us that Trump was the real victim.

Sanders thought she would have a receptive audience when she dropped by Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” to launch the White House defense of Trump’s outrageous tweets. But she was in for a surprise. Watch here.

Sanders told host Bill Hemmer that Trump is not someone who “gets attacked and doesn’t push back.” She claimed that Trump was merely defending himself from the latest in “an outrageous number of personal attacks” directed at himself and his staff. She herself claims that Brzezinski and Scarborough have gone after her a number of times. As Sanders saw it, Trump was merely putting the nation on notice that he “fights fire with fire,” and was not going to let the “liberal media and the liberal elites within the media” bully him with impunity.

Hemmer wasn’t buying it. He asked an obvious question–“But is that necessary?” Sanders replied that it was, claiming that Trump had a right to “push back” against “unnecessary” attacks on himself and his staffers. If Sanders thought that would be enough for Hemmer to back off, she was dead wrong. Hemmer said that Trump’s response was “entirely more personal than it needs to be.”


A number of Republican lawmakers were of the same mind.

It should have occurred to Sanders that if a Fox News host and several Republican lawmakers weren’t buying her line, it probably wasn’t going to work. But apparently it didn’t. She kept it up during Thursday’s press briefing. C-SPAN got a clip.

When asked if she thought Trump went too far, Sanders replied that Trump had been “attacked mercilessly” on “Morning Joe,” and had every right to fight back. She scoffed at the outrage over Trump’s tweets when “Morning Joe” had supposedly attacked him and a number of White House staffers–including herself–in a “very deeply personal” manner.

In response to criticism from his own party that the tweets were beneath the dignity of the presidency, Sanders claimed that Trump upholds his office by pushing forward with his agenda. However, she warned the “liberal media” and “Hollywood elites” that if they attack him, “he’s going to hit back.”

Later, Sanders claimed that Trump was merely doing what the American people elected him to do–fight for them, every day.

“Look, the American people elected a fighter. They didn’t elect somebody to sit back and do nothing. They knew what they were getting when the voted for Donald Trump, and he won overwhelmingly.”

Um, Sarah? He lost the popular vote by almost three million votes. But I digress. Even if you buy that Trump is doing what he was elected to do (and he isn’t) and even if you buy that Mika was bullying him (and she wasn’t), there is no defensible reason to respond in such a blatantly sexist and degrading manner.

I say this as someone who is half North Jerseyan, and has a bit of street fighter in him. I’m also a domestic violence survivor who was married for three years to an emotionally abusive and controlling woman. But does that give me the right to use sexist and misogynistic language in speaking out about her? No, no, never.

It’s tempting to feel some sympathy for Sanders. After all, on the face of it, she was painted into a corner. Just minutes before Trump weighed in, White House social media chief Dan Scavino got in a dig at the “Morning Joe” couple.

And Melania Trump essentially cut the legs out from her anti-bullying campaign when, through a spokeswoman, she said that her husband was merely keeping his vow to “punch back 10 times harder” when he was attacked.

But then I noticed that Sanders has two sons and a daughter. What mother with any kind of love for her sons would be okay with her sons talking to a woman in this way? Most of my more conservative lady friends would take away their sons’ phones and computer/television privileges if they used the kind of language Trump used. And what mother wouldn’t be outraged at hearing any boy talk to her daughter in this manner? By defending Trump’s slagging of Mika, Sanders has effectively told every parent in this country that this sort of thing is acceptable, even if it’s supposedly in self-defense.


So now we have a White House where using outrageous and sexist language in the name of defending yourself is standard operating procedure. If this is making America great again, we should all be shuddering.

(featured image courtesy Sanders’ Twitter)

Darrell Lucus
Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.

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