After it was announced that White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders would be leaving the administration at the end of the month — a relatively abrupt announcement, given it’s already the middle of the month — a couple of different things happened.
First, America had a sudden collective recollection that she said she was leaving by the end of last year and it’s already the middle of the year. Is she just messing with us now? It’s already been more than 90 days since the last time she held a press briefing, the longest period any administration has gone without one since Press Secretaries for the President existed. It’s not like she was doing a job, right?
But then we shuddered. What if this means there was a reason she wasn’t doing pressers, and Trump has someone else in mind?
Politico seems to think it’s the latter, and the name they’re reporting now is possibly the worst candidate we can think of, short of just pulling from the current pool of ass-kissers and reliable toadies. I’ll be honest, I was a little surprised when I read it, because after I had my own “shudder” moment yesterday, I really kind of figured it was going to be Kimberly Guilfoyle, former Fox News talking head and current main squeeze of Trump 2.0, Don Junior.
That’s not the intel that Politico has, however. According to yesterday’s “PM Playbook”:
After press secretary Sarah Sanders announced her departure Thursday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s office called STEVE CORTES, a President Donald Trump ally and frequent TV surrogate, to talk to him about the job, according to a source familiar with the situation.”
Yeah, that would be the Steve Cortes who served on Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council back in 2016, the same guy you see so often on Anderson Cooper 360, and The Lead with Jake Tapper. The same Steve Cortes who uses his appearances on CNN to actually call CNN “fake news” in real time during interviews and panel sessions. The same Steve Cortes who’s been serving for months now on Trump’s reelection committee.
So basically Sarah Sanders with shorter hair and on steroids. Wonderful.
The Trump administration continues to pretend, apparently, like it is concerned with being “normal” — that is to say, at least employing a Press Secretary, despite using them only to disseminate lies — and then considers for the role someone who despises the very audience they’re supposed to work with.
Featured image via screen capture
