Sarah Sanders to depart the White House

Sarah Sanders will leave the post and return home to Arkansas where she is tipped to run for Governor.

Outgoing White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks alongside US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders will be leaving the job at the end of the month to return to her home state of Arkansas, President Trump said Thursday.

“She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas,” Mr Trump tweeted.

....She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas - she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019

Ms Sanders assumed the role in July 2017, after Mr Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, left the job as the communications office struggled to find its footing. She has been a prominent defender of Mr Trump, sparring regularly with the press, but has taken on a lower profile after the White House stopped holding regular press briefings.

Most news out of the White House now comes from Mr Trump’s Twitter feed and his impromptu question-and-answer sessions with reporters. Ms Sanders hasn’t held a formal briefing in the press room in months.

Mr Trump interrupted an East Room event on Thursday to call Ms Sanders on stage. Ms Sanders called the job an honour of a lifetime. “I’ve loved every minute, even the hard minutes,” she said. “It’s truly the most special experience. The only one I can think of that might top it, just a little bit, is the fact that I’m a mum.” Ms Sanders didn’t comment on any potential political plans. The current Arkansas governor, Republican Asa Hutchinson, is in his second term and by state law can’t run for a third in 2022.

Ms Sanders has often been drawn into the controversies surrounding Mr Trump’s presidency.

She was cited in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation over false statements she made in public defending Mr Trump’s decision to fire Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey in 2017. She told reporters that “countless” FBI agents had told the White House they had lost confidence in the former FBI director.

In the Mueller report, Ms Sanders is quoted as telling investigators that the remarks, which weren’t true, were a “slip of the tongue.” “It was the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn’t a scripted talking point,” she said in an interview with ABC News following the release of the report.

Also in March 2018, Ms Sanders denied “knowledge of any payments” made by Mr Trump to porn star Stormy Daniels, who said she received hush money from Mr Trump late in the 2016 campaign to conceal their alleged affair. Two months later, Mr Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani acknowledged that Mr Trump had repaid his lawyer Michael Cohen $130,000 that had gone to Ms Daniels. In response to questions regarding the discrepancy, Ms Sanders claimed that she wasn’t aware of the development and that her earlier statement was based on the “best information” she had at the time.

The job weighed heavily on her family. Ms Sanders often mentioned that she had a Secret Service escort due to harassment she and her family received. In one episode, Ms Sanders and her family were asked to leave a Lexington restaurant over the owner’s objection to her patronage.

Ms Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas Republican governor and Fox News personality Mike Huckabee, has noted that she is the first mother to hold the position as the president’s top spokesperson. She has spoken about her three young children from the podium and brought them to the White House. She also sought to put a different spin on the briefings, often reading letters from children to Mr Trump and inviting kids to the White House.

Ms Sanders had been thinking about her exit since the winter, said a person familiar with her thinking. This person said that after more than two years in the White House, she was ready to leave the high-pressure job.

Ms Sanders signed on as a senior adviser for Mr Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, after managing her father’s short-lived challenge for the GOP nomination. Mr Huckabee dropped out after a disappointing showing in the Iowa caucuses, and he quickly endorsed Mr Trump.

The Wall Street Journal