One of Bryan’s friends, a beautiful girl he’d grown up with in Kansas City, hanged herself in her bedroom while her newborn baby girl slept in the nursery down the hall. Bryan and I attended her funeral in Kansas City together not long after we first started dating. In 2019, the Cleveland Clinic estimated that “as many as 50 to 75 percent of new mothers experience the ‘baby blues’ after delivery. Up to 15 percent of these women will develop a more severe and longer-lasting depression, called postpartum depression, after delivery.” My friends with kids had warned me about postpartum depression and told me if I ever experienced it to talk to them about it. I tried to open up, but hated the idea of admitting I was failing as a new mom and instead tried to hide my sadness. I felt even more guilty knowing how hard some of my friends were struggling to get pregnant and have children but couldn’t. I knew this was supposed to be a blissful time in my life and seeing all the happy, successful moms around me made it even harder.
Women can be our own worst enemies. I’ve often said that social media, while a great tool, can also be one of the most negative forces in our society. We remove personal relationships from our lives and replace them with screens that only highlight the greatest hits of everyone else’s lives. It’s difficult enough to be a good spouse, parent, child, friend, or coworker without constantly feeling you aren’t living up to the world’s idea of success. Being a new mom is tough, and spending your time nursing—isolated and lonely—looking at image after image of “perfect” moms on social media can drive even the best mom crazy. Most moms aren’t posting pictures of their kids having a meltdown in the grocery store. So instead we post the cutest pictures we can coax out of our kids, pressure ourselves to throw them Pinterest-worthy birthday parties, and post articles about how wonderful it is to be a mom.
The good news is it actually is wonderful to be a mom, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. About six weeks after Scarlett was born, I was holding her in her little nursery in the middle of the night and she looked up at me and gave me what I am sure to this day was the biggest, happiest smile I’ve seen from her. In that moment it happened. I knew I would do anything to protect her, love her, and show her the amazing world God created for her. I felt a warmth and peace cover me and I knew things were going to get better. I later had two perfect and adorable baby boys—Huck and George—and experienced postpartum depression again with Huck, but this time I was more prepared and able to talk about it with my family and friends, which made all the difference. Being a mom is not easy, but the best things in life aren’t easy, and there is nothing in my life that brings me more joy than my three wild, crazy, beautiful kids.
I kept working after having kids. After John Boozman’s successful campaign for US Senate, I was a senior advisor to Tom Cotton in 2014 when he defeated incumbent Democratic US senator Mark Pryor in Arkansas. I also consulted for companies and nonprofits, including the ONE campaign, founded by U2’s Bono to take action to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. In 2015, my dad decided to run for president again. This time around we knew what running for president looked like, which made the decision much harder. The expectations were higher and the stakes were, too. My parents for the first time in their lives were comfortable. My dad had the highest-rated weekend show on Fox News and a beautiful home on the beach in Florida with room for the grandkids. Life was good. Throwing himself into another campaign for president would put it all at risk. But my dad felt called to run and so again we dove in with everything we had. I signed on as the campaign manager and was actually pregnant with my third child due just a month after he announced. My dad kicked off his campaign in May 2015, and less than a month later we welcomed George Huggins Sanders into the world, making us a family of five. I took off only two weeks for maternity leave and sent a few epic 2:00 a.m. emails under the influence of pain medication in the hospital to the campaign staff with some of my “great ideas.” Bryan was also devoting nearly all of his time to the campaign and so George came to work with us every day. He quickly became the star of the office, especially the finance team, where the five women in charge of raising money passed him around the room between scheduling fund-raisers and making donor calls. George was loved by the staff and we even featured him in a web ad for the campaign.
But we quickly realized that 2016 wasn’t going to be anything like 2008. From the moment Donald Trump entered the race, he dominated it and established himself as the Republican front-runner. It was impossible for candidates like my dad with fewer resources to break through and get attention from the media, the lifeblood of a presidential campaign. After nine months of grueling work, my dad ended his campaign on the night of the Iowa caucus. We’d come up short—way short. I felt like I had failed my dad and the team. It was devastating. After three kids and my dad’s two presidential campaigns, I was exhausted and having trouble finding motivation, but Bryan encouraged me not to give up. He said I should go work for Donald Trump, who was still battling it out with Senator Ted Cruz (TX) and Senator Marco Rubio (FL) for the nomination. A few days after my dad exited the race, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski reached out and invited my dad and me to meet with Mr. Trump at a campaign stop in Georgia.
We flew from Little Rock to Atlanta to meet with Mr. Trump. We waited at the private airport terminal for a while—they were running late. Finally Trump Air, a huge 757, landed, and we boarded the plane. It was as nice and elegant as any plane my dad or I had ever flown on. Corey Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, Dan Scavino, Keith Schiller, Michael Glassner, and George Gigicos—the original Team Trump—were on board. My dad and I sat down at a four-top table and Mr. Trump walked in to join us. We talked and shared stories about how crazy the campaign had been. Mr. Trump, always hospitable, offered us both Cokes but we declined. I remember being taken aback by his larger-than-life personality and charm. Trump made a hard sell to get my dad to come to his event that day in Georgia to endorse him ahead of the “SEC primary.” My dad wanted to, but Fox News, who he’d just re-signed with, had asked him to stay neutral to maintain his impartiality as an on-air commentator. So my dad told Trump he couldn’t endorse him but the next best thing he could offer him was me: “If Sarah joins your campaign, it will send a clear message,” he said. Mr. Trump turned to Corey and told him to get me on the team. On the way home to Arkansas with my dad, he said I should do it: “Only Trump can win the nomination and beat Hillary.” I’d spent the better part of a decade working to get a Republican elected president and this was my chance. It was going to be Trump or Hillary—help save the country or let it go to hell. It was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. A few days later the Trump for President campaign announced me as a senior advisor.
I was hired to focus on outreach to women and Christians, but a few weeks into my new role I got a call from campaign headquarters, asking me to go on TV to represent Mr. Trump as a surrogate. My first interview for the campaign was on CNN. I had managed and consulted for a lot of campaigns, but my background wasn’t really press or communications. Still, the campaign wanted a female surrogate on TV who could speak to women and Christians and I fit the bill. My first appearance must not have been a disaster, because the next day the campaign called me back and asked me to do it again tomorrow. And so I did. And my role on the Trump campaign quickly changed. From that moment forward, Mr. Trump only wanted me to go on TV.
I did hundreds of media appearances making the case for Mr. Trump during the campaign, and was one of the first Trump surrogates to go on air after the Access Hollywood controversy. It was a low point in the campaign, and Republican leaders were abandoning Trump en masse. When asked on MSNBC at the debate if the president is a good role model for my kids, I said that as a person of faith, I believe there can only be one perfect role model—Jesus.
Like every other human being on the planet, I had no illusion that Mr. Trump was a perfect person—far from it—but in a race against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump was clearly the better choice.
Even when the polls showed him down and the media and political establishment—including many Republican leaders—counted him out, I believed Trump would win. I believed his message was resonating in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that hadn’t gone Republican in a long time. I also believed—having grown up in the Clintons’ shadow in Arkansas—that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a disaster America might never recover from. On November 8, 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States of America, the biggest political upset in the history of our country. Standing in New York City on election night watching President-elect Trump give his acceptance speech was one of the proudest moments of my professional life. I had spent the better part of a decade working to elect a Republican president, and now we finally had one willing to stand up and fight for the forgotten men and women of America.
During the campaign and even right up to the moment Trump won, I never expected to leave Arkansas and go work in the administration. Arkansas was home, and Bryan and I had no interest in moving our family to Washington. But after investing so much of our lives and careers trying to get a Republican elected president, I realized it was going to be hard to say no and walk away if the right opportunity in the administration presented itself.
Two weeks before the inauguration I got a call from incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer had worked at the RNC during the campaign and he and I had worked well together. He asked me if I’d be interested in joining the White House communications office. I said no, but told Spicer he should instead hire me in the press office as his principal deputy. I either made a good case or he was desperate to fill the role because he immediately agreed and said, “F—— it. Let’s do this.” The next day President-elect Trump called me to officially offer me the job and I said yes. I accepted the job on Monday evening and within seventy-two hours we had signed a two-year lease to rent a house in Arlington, Virginia, we had never seen before, and were under contract to sell our house in Little Rock. Our amazing friends Megan Turner, Ashley Caldwell, Cathy Lanier, and Katy Faulk helped us pack everything we owned onto two moving trucks, and Megan, one of my most loyal and trusted friends since college, threw a going-away party for us at her home in our neighborhood. It was an emotional night, and it was really hard to say good-bye to family, friends, and the state and hometown I loved, even if only for a temporary move to Washington. But with the inauguration fast approaching and duty calling, it was time to hit the road.
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Press Sec
Bryan and I drove a thousand miles across the country to Washington, DC, arriving just a few days before the president’s inauguration. When we pulled up at our house in Arlington alongside the two moving trucks it was the first time we’d ever seen it—or the neighborhood, for that matter—in person. We had spent our entire marriage in Little Rock, and our three kids had never lived anywhere else. It would be nearly a year before we’d return home to visit family and friends in Arkansas.
The first couple of days in Washington we unpacked boxes and met the kids’ teachers at their new school. We put our marriage through the first of many tests assembling a bed we purchased from IKEA—and survived that challenge only because we swore an oath never to do it again. We were hardly functional when Inauguration Day—my first official day at the White House—arrived. Bryan and I stood out in the freezing cold and proudly cheered when the president said, “Today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another—but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the American People.”
As soon as the president was sworn in and took the oath of office, we made our way through the mass of people to the Trump transition office. Here Bryan and I separated. He went back to the house to continue getting our family settled in, and we agreed to meet later that night to attend the Inaugural Ball together.
I arrived at the transition office and waited in the lobby to be cleared in. As I waited, I introduced myself to new coworkers and hugged old friends from the campaign. We were euphoric. The impossible was unfolding in front of us, and we weren’t just witnessing it—we were participating in the dawn of a new era for our great country.
I was finally directed into an office where a group was waiting to be transported to the White House—part of the second wave of Trump administration officials to go in. The five of us loaded into an unmarked white van and the three-minute drive felt like an hour. There was so much anticipation and none of us had any idea what to expect. I was sitting in the van next to my friend from the campaign and new Deputy Communications Director Jessica Ditto. We had bonded over our love of the South, dads who had both been pastors, and an appreciation for good bourbon. Also in the van were three staffers from the White House staff secretary’s office—Derek Lyons, May Davis, and Nick Butterfield. Jessica and I had no idea what the office of the staff secretary did, other than that they handled a lot of paper and had all graduated from Harvard!
We pulled up to the West Wing entrance. The van stopped and we stepped out. We didn’t know where to go or what to do. Finally someone came out and escorted us into the Roosevelt Room, where we were paired with a member of the White House Military Communications Office and assigned phones, emails, computers, badges, and other essential items for our new roles. After a few hours we were shown to our offices. Jessica and I went to Upper Press, where we had offices next to each other and discovered we were just a stone’s throw from the Oval Office down the hall. It was surreal.
Everything was a mess, almost like a business that had been shut down and abandoned, which is basically what happens during a transition. An entire government moves out one morning and by the afternoon a new one moves in.
Sean Spicer showed up shortly after and invited us into his office to get acquainted and start figuring out some of the basic responsibilities for the press and communications teams. We ended up staying there so late I had to call Bryan and ask him to bring my dress and meet me at our friend’s hotel room so I could get ready there. Bryan brought the wrong dress—more beach wedding than Inaugural Ball gown—but I had no other option so I put it on, borrowed makeup from my friend, had her help me with my hair, and off we went. Traffic was awful, and by the time we arrived at the Inaugural Ball the president was leaving and people were starting to clear out. We had all but missed it, but found some of my new colleagues in the VIP room still celebrating and joined in. We’d made it to the White House, but that night as we raised glasses, I had no idea that the fight of our lives was only just beginning.
I had to be at the office early the next morning for my first full day of work. As part of my orientation I was given a parking pass. They said my parking area was on West Executive Avenue but didn’t tell me where exactly. As I pulled my GMC Yukon through the 17th Street White House entrance, I went through multiple checkpoints and Secret Service agents just kept sending me through each gate. I couldn’t believe how close I was getting to the West Wing. It hadn’t really hit me yet that as the principal deputy White House press secretary I was considered a high-level official at the White House. I was surprised to find an open parking space right at the entrance to the West Wing. I didn’t want to overdo it and take the spot closest to the door so naturally I took the spot second closest. But as I unpacked boxes and moved into my office, I received a call from the Secret Service notifying me to move my car because the vice president was en route to the White House and I was in his space. A great start to my first full day on the job!
My poor parking choice turned out not to be the only bad decision made that day. We woke up the morning after the inauguration expecting to see positive headlines, but as would become usual, that wasn’t the case. Instead the press delivered a barrage of negative stories—the crowd was too small, the address was too controversial. The president wasn’t happy. He wanted Spicer to do his first press briefing and set the record straight. We started pulling information from as many reliable sources
as possible. We called the National Park Service to get their numbers for estimated attendance on the Mall and cross-referenced it with the Secret Service’s numbers for how many people had gone through the metal detectors. We pulled Metro numbers, TV ratings, and made sure we had good photos that captured the massive crowd on hand to celebrate the inauguration of our 45th president. Our team did a quick prep session with Spicer, but none of us felt confident rushing into that first briefing. It was a disaster. To his credit, Spicer acknowledged he should have handled it differently, and we all learned from it and got better as a result.
The next day I went into the White House early to prep senior administration officials for the Sunday shows. The main office line in the press office kept ringing. Nobody else was there yet so finally I picked it up and not thinking forgot to answer “White House press office” and instead just said, “Hello.” The voice on the other end of the line was familiar. He asked to speak to Spicer. I said he wasn’t in yet, and the caller asked, “Sarah, is that you?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” I replied, confused as to why the most powerful man in the world was calling the main line of the press office and a bit anxious that I was the one on the other end.
He asked me if I had read a story in one of the papers that morning. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet. He moved on, and asked me about his use of Twitter, and whether or not I agreed with his combative approach. Before I had a chance to reply, he launched into a story about how he was in a secure area for a meeting the day before. He said he had “this beautiful tweet” (by “beautiful tweet,” he surely meant “highly controversial tweet”) about a Democratic member of Congress, but wasn’t able to send it because no electronic communication could go in or out from his secure location. “Divine intervention, Sarah?” the president asked. “I don’t know, Mr. President,” I said, “but perhaps next time you have a ‘beautiful tweet’ to fire off maybe you should go spend a little more time there.” He laughed and hung up.
Speaking for Myself Page 7