The president and his staffers are scrambling to contain the fallout from yet another behind-the-scenes tell-all book, this time by legendary journalist Bob Woodward, that paints a deeply disturbing picture of a presidential administration falling apart at the seams as an uninterested and ignorant tyrant grapples with the staffers trying to rein in his more destructive impulses.
From petty insults hurled at his cabinet members to impulsive demands for the murder of an entire foreign government to stories of staffers stealing documents off the president’s desk, the book does not shine a very positive light on the infamous “well-oiled machine” of the Trump administration.
Which is why Trump immediately sent out his spin doctor, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to do some desperately needed damage control. Sanders insisted, as usual, that all of it was just the disgruntled fantasies of former staffers who were out for revenge against the administration that fired them.
“This book is nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad. While it is not always pretty, and rare that the press actually covers it, President Trump has broken through the bureaucratic process to deliver unprecedented successes for the American people. Sometimes it is unconventional, but he always gets results. Democrats and their allies in the media understand the President’s policies are working and with success like this, no can beat him in 2020— not even close,” Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
It turns out that everything in that statement is false. CNN’s White House reporter, Kaitlan Collins took to Twitter to publicly debunk the Press Secretary’s obvious attempt to discredit the determined reporting of one of our nation’s greatest journalists.
Sarah Sanders says the Woodward book is “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees.” I spoke to several people who work in the White House right now that told me they spoke w Woodward. pic.twitter.com/Nf7Z7p8w33
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 4, 2018
The Trump administration has accomplished very little in the past year and a half, and for Sanders to say that he “always gets results” is the height of ridiculous hyperbole.
Woodward’s reporting shows us that what little he has accomplished has been done in spite of, not because of, Donald Trump. It’s absolutely disgraceful that the White House press corps has to publicly fact-check the Press Secretary on what feels like a weekly basis, but we’re thankful they’re there to set the record straight.
