White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders enthusiastically played her role in Donald Trump’s war with the media while insisting that “we have not declared war on the press.” Sanders was appearing in an event with former Clinton administration press secretary Mike McCurry, who fiercely pushed back, leading Sanders to unleash a series of her trademark ridiculous statements:
“I think that’s a two-way street that there is a level of respect that could be, I think, certainly brought from the press corps as well,” Sanders responded. “I mean, the idea that you’re going to lay the blame at the feet of the President I find to be a little bit far-fetched.”
If Donald Trump attacks the press for being insufficiently deferential, it’s the press’ fault for being insufficiently deferential. If Donald Trump is going to lie more than 2,000 times in a single year (in his public statements alone), it’s just plain disrespectful of the media to point it out. In other words, “we have not declared war on the press” was something Sanders said as part of attacking the press for daring to do its job.
Trump, as TPM points out, “taunted cable news channels on his Twitter account” within minutes of the event ending. One tweet does not a war on the media make, but 169 tweets about “fake news” do. Or 67 tweets about the “failing @nytimes.” (Search the Trump Twitter Archive for yourself.) And that’s saying nothing of all his attacks on the media in campaign events and speeches since he took office.