On Tuesday, President Trump, during an extended tweeting spree that lasted (at the time of this writing) eleven tweets long, dropped one right in the middle that had a lot of Americans furious, and it was about his Press Secretary — who we all thought was moving on at the end of last year, but seems to be having a hard time getting a job outside the White House after having lied for Trump daily for two years.
As of today, it’s been more than a month since Sanders gave a press briefing, preferring instead to give 10- and 15-second answers to reporters’ shouted questions in the White House driveway. It’s either impromptu Q&A sessions like that or friendly interviews on Fox News, and other than that, Sanders has been largely unseen and unheard.
Trump gave a bizarre explanation:
The reason Sarah Sanders does not go to the “podium” much anymore is that the press covers her so rudely & inaccurately, in particular certain members of the press. I told her not to bother, the word gets out anyway! Most will never cover us fairly & hence, the term, Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2019
There is so much wrong with this tweet — the strange use of quotation marks, the fact that the word “hence” should never be used by anyone except in historical movies — that it would be easy to miss what’s glaringly wrong with the statement itself: He just admitted that we’re paying her a salary to not do her job.
Has Sarah missed a paycheck due to Trump’s lengthy government shutdown? Not so far. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are worried about buying food, let alone making their cell phone bills and rent, but Sarah gets directed by the President not to “bother” showing up to her job.
It didn’t go over well:
We pay her for not doing her job. Kind of like what we do for you.
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 22, 2019
So the White House Press Secretary who doesn’t need to do her job is getting her $180,000 salary while you’re making hundreds of thousands of federal workers do their jobs without pay…
Got it.
— Pé Resists (@4everNeverTrump) January 22, 2019
Sir, your press secretary still collects her salary even if you tell her not to “bother” to do her job. Meanwhile, you so rudely refuse to pay 800,000 American workers, most of whom are being forced to do their jobs every day without any pay. #WheresMitch https://t.co/fnVzXZQ6jE
— Jennifer Taub (@jentaub) January 22, 2019
So she’s a freeloader then. Getting paid to do nothing.
Go get a real job Sarah.
— Kevan Payne (@413LifeOf) January 22, 2019
Then why is she getting paid to do a job she isn’t doing?
— Billy Nation (@ChronosCrow) January 22, 2019
We wish she would just get officially furloughed so we didn’t have to worry about when she might be back.
Featured image via screen capture
