BAD FAITH
Sarah Huckabee Sanders Lies to ‘Fox & Friends’: April Ryan Literally Wants Me ‘Decapitated’
White House reporter April Ryan used a common idiom to call for the press secretary’s firing. But that didn’t stop SHS from bad-faith fretting that Ryan wants her dead.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday morning reacted to reporter April Ryan’s call for her to be fired over her admission to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that she lied by pretending that Ryan literally called for her to be “decapitated.”
Following the May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Mueller report revealed last week, Sanders lied to the press that she heard from “countless” FBI officials saying they lost confidence in Comey. Ryan, a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, lashed out at Sanders in a Thursday night CNN hit.
“When there is a lack of credibility there, you have to start...lopping the heads off,” Ryan said. “It’s ‘Fire Me Thursday’ or ‘Fire Me Good Friday’—she needs to go.”
Sanders’ father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, would later accuse Ryan of inciting murder against his daughter over an obvious figure of speech, demanding that both CNN and the White House Correspondents’ Association take action against her. This prompted Ryan to fire back, reminding Huckabee that he once said Ryan should be “gutted like a deer” in response to her public spat with his daughter in late 2017.
Appearing Monday morning on Fox & Friends, Sanders was asked about Ryan’s comments by co-host Steve Doocy, who noted that the show had already spoken to her father an hour before and that he was “steamed.”
“She was talking about how you have lied to the press and then later it is time to, you know, start firing people,” Doocy said. “Curious about your reaction.”
Brushing off the part of the question about her admitted lying—Sanders, in fact, has recently denied ever admitting she lied—the press secretary insisted that the White House reporter actually called for her beheading.
“I have had reporters say a lot of things about me,” Sanders declared. “They said I should be choked. They said I should deserve a lifetime of harassment, but certainly never had somebody say that I should be decapitated.”
She added: “This takes this to a new low even for the liberal media. I think it just once again proves why this journalist isn’t taken seriously.”
The hosts of Fox & Friends, of course, did not push back on Sanders’ bad-faith reading of Ryan’s expression.
Sanders went on to unironically say that the White House needs to be focused on pushing things “actually help Americans and not engage in these petty fights with journalists,” mere seconds after saying a reporter—who used a clear figure of speech—wants to cut her head off.
After Sanders’ Fox & Friends segment, Ryan tweeted out video of her CNN segment calling for Sanders to be fired; and she retweeted several followers who said Sanders should resign for lying on Fox News by pretending Ryan wasn’t using a common idiom.