Speaking for Myself

by Sarah Huckabee Sanders

  The president and the first lady were treated like royalty from the moment we landed in Riyadh. There were sword dances, flyovers, and American flags everywhere. The Ritz-Carlton where we stayed had images of President Trump and King Salman projected across the entire façade of the building. The chandeliers inside the Riyadh Ritz were opulent, including the one that hung over the men-only pool.

  While at the Saudi palace, Josh Raffel, who handled press and communications for Jared, Ivanka, and the National Economic Council, and I waited in a holding area while the president had a private meeting. Josh and I hadn’t known each other before starting in the White House. He was a liberal, aggressive, foulmouthed Jew from New York City who had spent most of his career working in Hollywood. I was pretty much his total opposite. But despite our differences I had grown to love Josh. He is one of the funniest people I know, intensely loyal, and probably the most talented communications strategist I’ve ever worked with. Nobody in the White House could work a story better than Josh, and he was always one of the first colleagues I turned to for help on the toughest assignments. Josh and I had been told there would be food in the holding area, and because I had missed breakfast and had been running around for several hours that morning, I needed something to eat. Josh stepped into one of the empty rooms to make a call, and I found a basket with a bag of Lay’s potato chips, a Diet Coke, and a milk chocolate Hershey bar. It wasn’t a meal or an ideal breakfast, but I figured it would at least keep me going until lunch. I opened the Diet Coke and the chips, and when Josh finished his call he walked back in to rejoin me but stopped dead in his tracks. I was concerned something had gone wrong in the meeting, but that wasn’t it. He said, “So … turns out we are not in the staff holding room—we’re in the president’s holding room. The chips you’re eating and the Diet Coke you’re drinking belong to the president, who will be on his way here to enjoy them any minute.” I panicked. I quickly threw away the evidence and scrambled to find the president’s military valet to see if he could replace the food and drink I had taken. He was nowhere to be found. I called Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime aide, with whom I had become friends during the campaign. I explained what had happened and he said the president was headed my way now and wouldn’t care about the chips but would definitely be furious about the Diet Coke. As I began to contemplate my next career move, Keith erupted in laughter and said, “Don’t worry, Sarah—the valet always has extra and I’ll send him down.” Josh and Keith never let me forget that incident and have teased me about stealing the president’s snack in Saudi Arabia ever since.

  After we returned to the United States, I continued to do more press briefings. Internally, a consensus had emerged from Reince, Bannon, and Spicer to have me take on the role of press secretary, and have Spicer focus his attention full-time on being the communications director, but the president had a different idea.

  At a recent press briefing, I had blasted CNN after they forced out three reporters and editors over a fake story they ran linking Anthony Scaramucci to Russia. President Trump noticed Scaramucci on TV taking a victory lap and was impressed. There had been several attempts to bring Anthony into the administration in some capacity, but none had worked out.

  In July, I met Bryan and the kids in Maine for our annual summer family vacation, but had to fly back early to return to work. Rumors were swirling that “the Mooch” was under consideration to be White House communications director. Reince and Spicer were furious. Neither one of them trusted Mooch or believed he was qualified for the job.

  The morning I returned from Maine the president called a meeting in the Oval Office, which we were told was to discuss Mooch for the communications director position. Beforehand, Ivanka, whom I had grown to really like over my short time in the administration, asked me to come by her office and said there would be some changes but not to worry about it. Assembled in the Oval Office were Ivanka, Jared, NEC Director and Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn, Bannon, Reince, Spicer, me, and Mooch. It wasn’t a discussion. President Trump told us that Mooch was the new communications director and that Mooch would report to him directly. The president was rightfully frustrated with all the leaks and the infighting in the White House and hoped Mooch could shake things up. He declared to the group “The leaks have to stop!” and then turned to me and said, “My Sarah has done a great job—thank you for not leaking.” This was the moment I first realized that the president must regularly talk to reporters privately off the record and have a pretty clear understanding from those conversations who he could trust not to leak.

  Spicer had previously told me that if the president ever hired Mooch he’d be gone, and sure enough, after the meeting in the Oval, Spicer resigned in protest. I was scheduled to do a press briefing in just a few hours, so I pulled Mooch aside and said, “I’m going to be asked who the press secretary is. What should I say?”

  “You are.”

  “Shouldn’t we confirm that first with the president?”

  “I already did.”

  I told him I wanted to talk to the president, too. He said, “He’s waiting for you whenever you’re ready.”

  So Mooch and I walked back into the Oval. The president said I was ready and he wanted me in the role. He suggested Mooch and I do this first briefing together to announce the changes so that’s what we did.

  I texted Bryan “I’m the new White House press secretary” as he was hiking with the kids in Acadia National Park. He had bad cell service in the mountains, and before my husband and I even had a chance to talk about it, Mooch and I walked out to the podium in the White House briefing room. I introduced Mooch as the new White House communications director, and then Mooch introduced me as the new White House press secretary. I then opened it up for questions. At the end of the briefing, I was asked about all the chaos in the White House. I responded with the first thing that came to mind as a mom of three young kids: “You should come to my house in the morning. That’s chaos. This is nothing.” A few days later I actually got a request from a reporter to come to my house in the morning to see all the chaos. I declined, but it illustrated how much my life was about to change.

  At our first all communications and press staff meeting, Mooch threatened to fire everyone if the leaks continued. He told the assembled group of forty or so White House aides: “You need to decide right now: Do you want to work in the White House? Or do you want to work outside the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue selling f—— ing postcards to tourists? I’ll take this office down to just me and Sarah if I have to!” I was not amused. I couldn’t believe Mooch was including me in his threat to our team. I suspected most of the White House leaks were coming from senior administration officials, not low- or midlevel press or communications aides. I had confidence in our team and wanted no part of this madness. Besides, the last thing I wanted was to be left alone with just Mooch!

  As Mooch was scaring our staff to death, his phone rang several times. After a few attempts he finally answered and it was his mother. He told her he was in a meeting and asked her if she wanted to talk to Kellyanne. Although they didn’t know each other, she wanted to talk to her and so he passed his phone to Kellyanne and went right back to berating the staff and telling a story about how he once caught his cousin stealing from the family ice-cream shop and “fired his a—.” It was clear he was serious. The president had given him a task of finding the leakers and he was going to make an example out of someone.

  There was a guy on the press team whom several people had identified as a leaker. He was a hard worker and smart. I had seen no evidence to indicate he was a leaker, but Mooch was convinced otherwise. Mooch went outside to do a TV interview, and as is customary, on his walk back he stopped to talk to the press. During his gaggle he announced this staffer was going to be fired and others would follow if they kept leaking. I was appalled and confronted Mooch as soon as he came back inside. He agreed he should have probably talked to the young man first before he announced his firing on nationa
l television. So we went to Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin to take the necessary steps to have the conversation with the staffer. After all, this was the White House and there was protocol that needed to be followed. I soon learned that Mooch’s paperwork hadn’t been completed yet so he didn’t even have the authority to fire anyone. I was told that the White House counsel’s office would handle it, but I didn’t like counsel’s office firing someone on my team so I told them I would do it. I didn’t agree with Mooch’s decision, but the decision had already been made. The least I could do was give the poor guy the courtesy of a conversation on why he was being let go and thank him for his service to the president. So we sat down in the office and I let him know that that day would be his last. It was a rude awakening to the new responsibilities that had fallen to me.

  A few days later the president flew to speak at the Boy Scouts Jamboree in West Virginia, and Mooch came along for the ride. While we were in the staff vans en route to the Jamboree, Mooch announced, “I’m proud to report I crossed a major item off my bucket list today.” I assumed he would say something like “riding on Air Force One,” but instead Mooch said he’d just “taken a huge sh—— in the West Wing.” The rest of us in the van sat there speechless as Mooch proudly told us he’d immediately called his son afterward to share the big news.

  As we stood in the hot sun listening to the president address the Boy Scouts, Mooch told me, “My wife just had a baby, and I’m here instead of there.” I could sense the pain in his voice and my heart hurt for him and his family. Given all his erratic behavior, I knew there had to be something going on, and for that moment he put the tough-guy act aside and I could tell how much he loved his family and regretted not being with them.

  A few days later Mooch forgot to go off the record talking to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza and Lizza released the interview in full. Among other things, Mooch warned Lizza he was going to “eliminate everyone on the comms team” if Lizza didn’t tell him who leaked the guest list for a dinner at the White House. “I’m asking you as an American patriot, this is a major catastrophe … give me a sense for who leaked it!” He then blasted Reince Priebus as “a f——ing paranoid schizophrenic” and leveled a disgustingly foul insult against Steve Bannon.

  It was insane. I had the terrible misfortune of having already scheduled an interview on Fox News for that evening, which meant I was the first White House official to go on the record to answer for Mooch’s tirade. The best I was able to come up with was, “We should be focused on who has a job in America, not who has a job in the White House.” I’ll admit it wasn’t a great defense, but in my own defense, there really wasn’t one!

  In the middle of the night, Senator John McCain voted to kill the Obamacare repeal. It was the final nail in the coffin of the Obamacare repeal effort, and the first major legislative defeat for the Trump administration. The president and Republicans across the country were furious. Republicans in Congress had spent years fighting to repeal Obamacare and finally had a chance but couldn’t get it done. Only six months into the Trump presidency, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was fired on Air Force One, and four-star Marine General and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly was announced as his replacement.

  On General Kelly’s first day as chief of staff we were set to have a cabinet meeting. This would be my first time to attend a cabinet meeting and so I arrived a few minutes early and quickly found my seat along the back wall next to other senior White House staff. As I sat there waiting on the meeting to begin I noticed General Kelly come in and motion toward me. I pointed at myself as if to ask, “Are you talking to me?” A bit exasperated, he nodded yes. I cautiously walked toward General Kelly and he told me his first order of business as the chief of staff was to fire Mooch. Mooch had only been on the job for ten days, but it had felt like an eternity. General Kelly told me that for now I would be managing both the press and comms teams until we found a new communications director. He said, “You got it?” I said, “Yes, sir,” and returned to my seat. Once again things were happening so fast I didn’t have much time to process it all. After the meeting and a few hours later Mooch walked into my office and said, “I’m out. Kelly fired me. All I need to know is this … have you laughed harder at any point during your time in the White House than you have over the last ten days?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Good, then my job is done here.” We hugged good-bye and Mooch walked out of my office and out of the building.

  5

  No-Man’s-Land

  Every day as White House press secretary was a bit different but some things never changed. Most days I got up at 5:30 a.m. to emails, texts, and missed calls from reporters and morning show producers. I would respond to as many inquiries as I could before getting out of bed, and then rush to the shower before my three kids came running in needing clothes, breakfast, and lunches packed for the day.

  Usually by 6:30 a.m. the president was tweeting and making news, which could completely alter our day.

  I kissed my kids and husband good-bye and by 7:15 a.m. I was out the door in the car and on the phone returning calls from the president, senior administration officials, or reporters, and checking in with staff on any breaking news we needed to be ready for that morning. I would arrive in my office in the West Wing by 7:45 a.m., where I had a pot of coffee and the senior White House press and communications staff there to do a quick rundown of the news of the day, the message we planned to drive, and what stories or events we needed to monitor. This was a tight-knit group. The original group consisted of Hope Hicks, Josh Raffel, Michael Anton, Raj Shah, Hogan Gidley, Jessica Ditto, Lindsay Walters, Adam Kennedy, and Ory Rinat, and as roles changed and staff was added, others included Mercedes Schlapp, Bill Shine, Judd Deere, Stephen Groves, Julia Hahn, and Alexa Henning. This meeting was half-work, half-play. We said things we couldn’t say to anyone else and joked about responses we wished we could say publicly. In this short window we did life together and became friends. Then we got serious and focused on the onslaught that was coming at us.

  After this group met we added the rest of the press and communications staff to the meeting to go over a more general overview of what was needed for the day and walked through the daily schedule. It was only 8:30 a.m. and I was already on my second cup of coffee with three hours of work behind me. After I wrapped the press and communications meetings, I headed to the White House senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room where a few senior members of our team and I weighed in on the news of the day, our messaging recommendations, and made requests from senior administration officials for information or to do media appearances. We also got information we needed regarding the president’s schedule and other major events, as well as detailed answers we needed for the many stories reporters were working on.

  Around the time the White House senior staff meeting finished, I would often get a call from the president if I hadn’t already. He would give me a list of things he wanted me to handle—some related to my job, and many not. He’d always want to know “how things are playing” in the media. It also gave me a chance to ask him for guidance on some of the incoming I was getting that morning and his latest thinking on an issue or news development. If there was something big driving the day and he hadn’t called me yet, this was usually the time I called him to check in and get an update so I could do my job and accurately speak on his behalf.

  After the senior White House staff meeting or call with the president, I had a little time to respond to email, return calls, and often do quick meetings with reporters who were constantly waiting outside my office throughout the day looking for updates on stories. By 10:30 a.m. the president’s private meetings and calls from the White House residence had finished and policy and internal staff meetings in the West Wing with the president were starting. Over the next couple of hours, I spent my time in and out of these meetings. Around noon our team would gather in my office to begin briefing prep. During our early morning meeting we discussed key
topics we thought would be important that day and divided up who would be responsible for making sure we had the most up-to-date and accurate information on any given topic. Oftentimes, this meant bringing in a subject matter expert to give me a quick briefing and allow me to ask questions. For instance, if we knew that a new jobs report was about to hit, I would connect with National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow. Kudlow, always the happy warrior, was one of my favorite people in the White House, and brought a smile to my face every time I saw him. He was somebody everyone in the building loved to be around. The day Larry had a heart attack it felt like the spirit of our team had been crushed, and I made it my personal mission to get him to quit smoking. I’m still fighting that battle!

  Although constantly at odds with the press, the president still appreciated their power, and knew that it was impossible for me to do my job effectively if I wasn’t in the room. It was the only way I could understand the president’s thinking, know his position on a range of issues and policy debates, and clearly articulate his message on a day-to-day basis to the country and to the world. As a result, I spent more time with and talking to the president over the course of my two years as press secretary than any senior White House official other than Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Dan Scavino. I realized quickly that while updates from senior administration officials were critical for me to do my job, the president had the final word and in the end his word was the only one that mattered to effectively speak on his behalf.