Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders dismissed a recent string of scathing accounts from ex-administration officials lambasting President Trump, calling them “disgruntled employees.”
Sanders, who is releasing a new book about her time in the West Wing, was asked on about her former colleagues’ criticism of the president, including former national security adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Defense Secretary James Mattis.
“I think it’s really simple. I think mine is the honest account,” Sanders told George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday. “You’re looking at people who left as disgruntled employees.”
“Let’s not forget whose agenda was selected by the American people. Over 63 million people came out and overwhelmingly put their stamp down that they wanted Donald Trump to be their president — not John Bolton, not Rex Tillerson, not James Mattis,” she continued.
Mattis, a decorated Marine general who resigned as defense secretary in December 2018 in protest of Trump’s Syria policy, accused Trump of abusing the powers of his office in a bombshell June op-ed.
Tillerson has accused Trump of being an undisciplined leader who doesn’t like to read, while Bolton, who was fired in September 2019, offered an unflattering account of the president in his tell-all tome, “.”
When pressed on the fact that all these men were appointed by Trump, Sanders said they had “a very different agenda than the president” and suggested they had forgotten Trump was in charge, not they.
“I think my story is very candid, very authentic, and shows you a different side to the president that you’re not going to see on the news media and certainly not from some people who left not necessarily on their own terms.”
The president’s former press secretary, who stepped down in June 2019, also pushed back on reports that Trump had disparaged US war dead, a claim the White House and other former West Wing stဣaffers have vehemently🌃 denied.
“I spent more time with the president over two and a half years than just about anybody outside of his family and I saw a president who loves this country, who loves the men and women of our armed forces.”