Sanders Exiting White House Press Secretary Post

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is exiting the White House at the end of the month after three and a half years with the Trump campaign and White House, the President said in a tweet Thursday (June 13).

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The President signaled she could run for governor of Arkansas, a post formerly held by her father, Mike Huckabee.

The President called her "tough" and "great."

Sanders, who became press secretary after the resignation of Sean Spicer in 2017, did not come off well in the Mueller report, according to which she had told the investigators for Robert Mueller that her statements about hearing from "countless members of the FBI" that they had lost confidence in then-FBI director James Comey was "a slip of the tongue" and that a separate statement to the press that rank-and-file FBI employees had lost confidence was made "in the heat of the moment," rather than the light of accuracy, and "was not founded on anything."

Sanders later walked that back, telling Good Morning America that her only "slip of the tongue" related to the FBI staffers who supported firing James Comey was in using the word "countless."

Sanders has not held a press conference in months, so her absence as the public face of the Administration positions will not be as notable as with previous press secretaries holding regular, often daily, briefings.

In July 2018, Sanders refused to condemn or criticize Trump supporters at a rally who chanted "CNN Sucks" as CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta was trying to do a stand-up for the network.

Sanders said the administration supports both freedom of the press and of speech, which go hand in hand.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.