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Sept. 11, 2020 - The Charlie Kirk Show
30:09
Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House with Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Former White House Press Secretary and friend of The Charlie Kirk Show, Sarah Huckabee Sanders joins Charlie to discuss the release of her new book, "Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White...

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders Joins The Show 00:02:26
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Super special episode in store today.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a dear friend of mine, a fighter for our country, someone who defended our president in the den of lions around the activist media is here on the Charlie Kirk Show.
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Sarah Huckabee Sanders is here, everybody.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
I am thrilled to be joined today by my friend, an American patriot and hero, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is the author of the new book, Speaking for Myself, Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House.
Sarah, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
Thank you so much, Charlie.
It's an honor to be with you and always fun to be with friends in a friendly interview.
I've done some of the others, and trust me, this is much better.
You did the view, and you also used to run the press briefings at the White House, which I would guess the questions there were probably a lot more unfair than what we are going to be discussing today.
Can you first just tell us your story, Sarah?
There are so many young people that listen to this podcast, and I just like telling, having people explain their stories.
Inside The Mueller Investigation 00:10:10
You were, I believe my memory is correct.
You were deputy press secretary and then became press secretary.
Just tell us how you got into this political thing.
Obviously, you come from a family that is probably more political than not, but just walk us through your story.
Sure, I'll try to give you the quick version.
So as you know, I grew up in politics.
My dad ran for office for the very first time when I was nine, and I just couldn't get enough.
I loved that in politics, you get to meet such a variety of people.
He had been a pastor and run a communications agency before that.
And we joke in our family that church work and politics are a lot alike.
We take everybody.
And so I got exposed to such a different world, and I couldn't get enough.
While most kids were going to summer camp and spending the summer at the pool, I was at the Arkansas Festival Circuit passing out brochures, asking people to vote for my dad, and sitting around the kitchen table, listening to polling results and trying to soak up as much of it as I could.
The part I liked the most is that you got to do something and then see the impact of those policies on people.
Every time I would travel with my dad after he was elected governor, I would hear people who would say, you know, the program that your dad put in for children's insurance and children's health care saved my child's life.
And so getting to put faces with policy really impacted me at a young age.
And I knew I wanted to be part of something to help other people.
I'd always been more of a behind the scenes consultant and operative until 2016.
And I got a call asking me if I was willing to go on CNN on behalf of President Trump.
I was working for the campaign as a senior advisor, more strategic role at that point.
And I didn't know enough to say no to going on CNN at the time.
So I said, yes, I did it.
And they called me back the next day, said, Hey, you're not that bad.
Will you do it again?
And a couple of days later, I get a call from none other than Donald Trump himself.
And he says, stay on TV.
Don't do anything else.
That's where you belong.
He said, trust me, I know.
And that was sort of the beginning.
And from then on, I started doing a lot more surrogate work for the campaign.
And once he won and went into the White House as deputy press secretary under Sean Spicer, who's a good friend.
And I worked with Sean those first few months before he resigned after the very colorful Anthony Scaramucci arrived on the scene.
And after 11 days, he left and I was the only one standing.
And the rest is history.
I spent two and a half years almost every single day by the president's side and loved every minute, even the really challenging and difficult parts.
I wouldn't trade it.
And I was honored.
And it was a real privilege to get to work for the president.
Yeah, I think those 11 days, there needs to be a Netflix documentary.
Eventually, that needs to be made about it.
What a whirlwind of American.
I'm sure it's in the works.
And if Anthony has anything to do with it, he'll make sure it happens.
I think that he'll be the starring actor, actually.
Anthony Scaramucci as himself.
So, Sarah, can you walk us through something you mentioned?
I've had the opportunity to get to know the president.
You know him incredibly well.
He gets such a bad rap by so many people.
He believed in you.
He said he saw opportunity in you.
He said, I love seeing you on TV.
He poured into you and elevated you to the top communication arm of the United States government.
Can you talk about how the president empowers other people and his leadership style?
Absolutely.
One of the things I love about the president is he just goes straight to the source.
He doesn't mess around.
And if he thinks you're capable of doing something, he doesn't care what your title is, what your background is.
He says, just go do it.
Just get the job done.
And I think that's his years of being a builder and being a businessman.
He is very results driven.
That is his leadership style.
He wants to get the job done.
And one of the things that I loved about this president is he did empower us.
He, you know, there's always this talk about the president not empowering women.
I'm like, nothing could be further from the truth.
Not only did he surround himself with women, but very strong, opinionated, vocal women.
And he listened to us.
He took into account the things we said and really paid attention.
One instance in particular that was very impactful for me personally.
As my time at the White House, I was attacked constantly.
Nothing was off limits.
You know, most people, it's about their politics.
For me, it was about my appearance, my makeup, my clothes, my fitness to be a parent.
Everything was on the table for the liberal mob to come after me.
And on one particular occasion, an LA Times reporter had written just a pretty scathing article and called me some not so nice words, which I won't repeat because I'd like to block them out.
And even my own husband didn't know necessarily how to respond and just sort of the staff and people around me thought if we ignored it, it'll go away and, you know, Sarah will be fine.
But the president, we're in Japan.
We're walking into a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Abe.
The president has so many more important things on his plate in that moment.
And he grabs me and turns me and looks straight in my eyes and says, Sarah, you're smart, you're beautiful, and the only reason they come after you is because you're good at your job.
Now, don't let those get you down.
I won't repeat the words he used, but he likes colorful language sometimes.
But he made his point.
You know, he kind of patted me on the arm and said, Now get back to work.
And it was in that moment he gave me the confidence and supported me when nobody else around me really knew how to do it.
The president did.
And then we went right back to work.
And it was one of those moments that was very impactful and very helpful to me to keep going and keep pushing forward.
That's awesome.
Yeah, he really believes in other people.
And you want him in your corner if you're in a street fight.
I'll tell you what.
He'll defend what is right and what is good.
And that is exactly right.
And so can you also just kind of talk about your time in the White House while you were under the Mueller microscope, which was a sham investigation.
The House Democrats were doing everything they possibly could to destroy this president and his accomplishments.
You got a lot done in the time that you were there communicating that and also balancing being a mother.
How is that even?
I mean, what would your day look like?
I mean, just walk us through when you would get up, when you'd go to bed.
People are curious about that.
I am too.
How did you keep that all together?
You know, some days I'm not sure myself, Charlie, but you're running on pretty much pure adrenaline most of the time.
You're up by usually 5 a.m. and typically with a barrage of emails and texts and calls from all of the morning show producers.
A lot of people believe that the White House press secretary's job is only standing at the podium.
But what they don't know is that almost every reporter in the country and frankly around the world has your cell phone number, your email, and access to your office.
And so all day, every day, you're fielding calls and requests for information from reporters while at the same time trying to keep up with Donald Trump, which is not an easy task.
I always say for somebody who's twice my age, he also has twice my energy.
I don't know how he does it.
And the rest of us are just struggling to keep up.
But the days would start around 5 a.m. dealing with all of the news from the night, morning show producers, prepping for that, and usually tried to be in the office by 7:30.
I'd rush to get my kids ready for school out the door and arrive to the office for morning meetings.
And then usually a call from the president to talk about maybe some of his tweets from the morning to what we were going to message on a couple of those.
Everything that I thought when I got up at five and thought would drive the day would usually change by 7 a.m. when the president started telling us what the news of the day really was.
And, you know, then we go through a series of meetings, prep time for the briefing, and usually trying to spend as much time during the day with the president and in meetings because it made my job much easier to speak on his behalf if I was in the room and I saw things as they were happening and I could see the process from the beginning.
One of the things I loved about the president, he doesn't, you know, he's always fighting with the press, but he also understands the power of the press.
And he knew it would be impossible for me to do my job and communicate his message and speak on his behalf if I wasn't in the room and I didn't know what was going on.
And so he took me with him everywhere, which was pretty incredible to have a front row seat to history.
I got to sit across the table from Kim Jong-un and, you know, dozens of other world leaders, which was pretty incredible.
You asked about the Mueller report in particular, or the Mueller investigation, which was a ridiculous witch hunt that went on for two years, a total waste of taxpayer dollars and time.
And a lot of that was just perpetuated by Democrats and the media.
I got to experience firsthand the ridiculousness of that investigation when I was asked to come in and be interviewed by the Mueller team.
He came in, Mueller quickly said hello.
And with minutes, I was left with that group of angry Democrats who I'd come voluntarily.
I wasn't a target.
I wasn't a subject of the investigation.
And I'd come on my own volition to interview with them at their request.
Facing Angry Democrats Alone 00:15:30
And they made me feel like a common criminal from the moment I walked in with just a barrage of questions.
And I knew at that point that it was, you know, a total waste and that this would be nothing more than an excuse and an avenue to attack the president.
I mean, you're exactly right.
And so, Sarah, what's incredible is I'm guessing you had to have legal representation there, right?
And I don't know if you had to pay for it privately or independently, but I know some people in the White House that had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to represent themselves.
And I mean, if there's anything that should be litigated, it's the Democrats like Adam Schiff that should reimburse everyone that had to pay all these legal fees to defend themselves against this incredibly, I think, illegal and unconstitutional witch hunt.
I know there are people in the White House that you know, Sarah, we don't have to say their names, that are still in debt over the legal fees they had to pay to defend themselves.
It's absolutely unbelievable.
It really is.
It's preposterous, totally insane.
Yeah, and it's really, it's all because they just supported the president.
So, so when would your days end and how would they end?
I get these questions a lot, Sarah, and I don't even know how to answer them.
People say, Charlie, how do the people in the White House do it?
I say, look, I think I have a crazy schedule.
I travel.
I do two podcasts a day.
I speak all this.
I say, but working in the White House, I mean, I've visited there a couple of times.
You know, I came and visited you.
It is the most intense work environment I've ever seen.
And that's something that people need to realize: it is a work environment, right?
I mean, it's obviously it has all the pageantry and it's the people's house, but there are people like you that you go to work every day, and 15 feet outside of your office is the AP Huffington Post and all of these news reporters that are just waiting for one thing to make your life miserable.
So, how would the day end and how would that actually work?
You know, it would vary.
That's the mystery of the century.
There's no typical day in any White House, but especially in the Trump White House.
And so, most days didn't end until close to midnight.
I would usually finish at the office and try to leave by seven o'clock so I could tuck my kids into bed.
And as soon as they went to sleep, I would be back at work on phone and email, usually well into the evening, fielding calls from reporters, working stories before they hit print the next morning.
And then, you know, you try to get a few hours of sleep and then wake up and do it all over again the next day.
You don't realize how tired you are until after you leave.
And then, you know, I had talked to some of my predecessors who were like, take a minute.
Don't try to rush anything.
You're going to need a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or two to like, you know, acclimate to the real world all over again.
And so I didn't realize I didn't take them as serious as I should have until after I left the White House.
And you just kind of crashed because your body is so tired from, for me, two and a half years of 15 to 20 hour days every day.
Yeah.
And biochemically, your body gets used to those five-hour nights and you get used to the triple shot espresso.
And then once you leave the White House, you start to, you know, okay, maybe I'll sleep six and a half hours and your body tries to basically rewire itself back into normalcy.
And I mean, I've talked to you and other people that have been in the White House.
It is the hardest place, especially with this president, that someone can work right now because it's not just the pressure of the job.
You know, I'm sure it was hard for the people that worked in the Obama White House.
But if someone in the Obama White House did something wrong, the press wouldn't cover it, right?
They'd just say, don't cover this.
You know, we'll take care of you.
I mean, if you guys do something right in the Trump White House, they will do whatever they possibly can to misrepresent it.
So, Sarah, can you walk through what a press briefing is and was?
I mean, you did an amazing job defending the president, defending our country.
How do those things work?
You did them quite with quite regularity.
You'd have probably a meeting with the president, get your thing, you know, get your thoughts together.
You'd walk out to the press briefing room and then just go to combat.
Can you walk us through that?
Sure.
So the best preparation for me was, again, spending time around the president, being in meetings as policies were being discussed and formulated and fought out from beginning until their conclusion.
And so making sure I had a good foundation was really important.
I had context for when they asked about all of the crazy PALS intrigue stories that they loved to hear.
I had been in the room, so I had authority and confidence to answer those questions.
Before the briefing, usually I would have ideally two hours, but a lot of times it would get consolidated into an hour, sometimes even 30 to 45 minutes of prep time with my team where they would come in.
And the way that I operated best was to do a murder board.
So they would fire off questions they thought might come up and we would kind of walk through some of those answers.
You have no idea what's going to be asked.
You know, kind of the big news of the day and what people are interested in, but anything is on the table.
And, you know, so you have to sort of prepare for everything.
Sometimes you just have to go with your gut instinct and hope that you nail it right and don't start a war with another country or crash the economy for the wrong answer.
And then I would, the last thing I would do before every briefing, usually I would go in and talk to the president, check a couple of questions I needed clarity on, and then I would come back and take a few minutes by myself.
And I would read the daily devotional from Jesus Calling, Sarah Young's book.
That was the last thing I would do before I walked into the briefing.
It was a way for me to calm my mind and a good reminder of what mattered most.
And after that, I usually had kind of a piece and I would just walk in.
You know, the briefings lasted anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and take questions and usually battle it out with some of America's toughest and most shrewd journalists there are.
And, you know, we had some fun moments, that's for sure, and some tough moments.
And every once in a while, we even had some heartwarming moments in that room.
I tried to do things that brought the temperature down and allowed us to really get a message out to the American people because ultimately that's what the briefing is supposed to be about.
Unfortunately, the press sort of turned into more of how do we get the gotcha moment, the takedown moment of not just the staff, but the president himself.
Yeah, and that's what people have to realize is you are on center stage.
I mean, you're on five hours of sleep.
You have to do all the communications.
If you say one thing wrong, it's everywhere.
And then you got to go on live TV, middle of the day, where everyone's trying to make that moment.
It's one of the hardest, most pressure-filled jobs.
And you did a phenomenal job, Sarah.
You really did.
It was absolutely incredible.
Can you also talk a little bit about, and you talk about this in the book.
Again, I want to plug the book again.
Everyone's got to go buy a copy.
Speaking for myself, Faith, Freedom, and the Fight for Our Lives Inside of the Trump White House.
Can you talk about President Trump's famous confrontation with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer?
This is one of my favorite moments.
I wish it would have, there would have been more moments like this.
You had a front row seat to this.
I wish there had been a camera there so that we could show the hypocrisy of the Democrats.
This was a contentious battle.
We were in the heat of the moment trying to get funding for border security.
And the president was hell-bent on making sure he didn't walk out of there without something during this, you know, course of several week battle.
So he comes into this room and he simply asks Nancy, are you ready to talk about border security?
Do you actually want to do something on border security?
She basically said no very quickly, like, we don't have any interest in helping you.
And the president was like, well, then this is a huge waste of time.
He was very calm.
He came in.
He asked the question.
They said no.
And he said, all right, bye-bye.
And literally waved bye bye and walked out of the room.
And within minutes, we're sitting in the president's back dining room watching TV.
And the Democrats go out right in front of the White House and say the president storms in, storms out, bangs on the table.
And we're like, wait, what?
That didn't happen.
We were in that room.
And Kevin McCarthy goes out immediately.
I was like, I don't know what room they were in because the one I was in, that didn't happen.
Yet, of course, the media took the Democrats side, perpetuated their story.
But ultimately, the president won that battle.
We're building the wall and he is protecting American citizens, one of the things that he promised he would do in 2016 and has definitely followed through since getting elected.
No, that's, I remember that very well.
And the media was trying to make it seem something that it wasn't.
But, you know, Pelosi and Schumer, they're able to lie and the activist media stands up for them and basically has become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.
So you also talk in your book here, and you mentioned this about the devotional, your commitment to faith and family.
Can you talk more about that and how people can apply the lessons that you learned in the White House to their own life?
Not everyone is under the same sort of scrutiny and pressure that you were, but in their own realm, people deal with adversity every single day.
What are some things that you knew when you left the White House that you didn't know before you got into the White House that you believe made you a stronger Christian, a better fighter, and also some advice that you could communicate?
Well, I think one of the most important things for me personally, and it was tested every day, and I had to lean on my faith constantly, was knowing what I believed in and who I was before I ever stepped foot into that building and stepped up behind that podium, not needing the New York Times or the Washington Post or anybody else to define me because I had a God who had already done that, who had created me for a unique and special purpose.
And it didn't have anything to do with the liberal left or the crazy media that were trying to attack me.
And knowing that no matter what happened in that room or in that job, at the end of the day, I would still have my faith.
I would still have my family.
And I would still have freedom to live in the greatest country on the face of the planet was what gave me confidence to tackle each day.
It was what gave me the ability, no matter how hard the days were, how difficult the challenge is, to continue showing up day after day and continue fighting back.
If I hadn't had that, I don't know that I would have made it two and a half years in that White House because it is so brutal.
But having that confidence and knowing who I was and what I believed in made all the difference in the world.
So let's talk politics now.
The president is in a very tight reelection battle with Joe Biden.
The fact that it is as tight as it is in some of the public polling, I actually think is incredible.
And it kind of goes to show the president's perseverance and durability, considering all that the media and the Democrats and the Chinese have thrown at this president.
It's absolutely incredible with the virus and the cover-up, the impeachment, the spying, all of it.
What is your analysis of the 2020 race?
What do you think that the president needs to do to ensure victory?
And what are some things that we might be missing about the current election cycle?
Well, I think certainly right now, given everything that's happening around the country, I think the president's message of law and order, safety and security is very important.
There is so much unrest and so much uncertainty.
At the end of the day, people want to know that they can walk outside of their homes, that they can drop their kids off at school and not be afraid of being attacked.
And I think that is a huge contrast between this president and Joe Biden.
Joe Biden didn't even start talking about the riots and the violence that are taking place in cities all across this country until he saw the poll start to tighten.
In fact, he didn't even come out of his basement until that moment.
And to me, that is a huge difference between these two candidates.
Joe Biden is a person of convenience, not of conviction.
And it wasn't until that moment when we saw those polls start to tighten that he even brought that up.
And they don't really have a lot of credibility on the topic when his running mate was busy fundraising to bail people out of jail when these moments were taking place and the president was standing up and saying, guys, we can't have this.
People certainly have a right to peacefully protest and they should, but they can't burn cities to the ground and destroy businesses.
The other message I think the president has to lean in on is he built one of the strongest economies we've ever had, and we need him to do it again.
When we come out of this virus, when we open the government or open the country completely back up, we need somebody who understands how to run a business, how to grow a business, and the impact that that has on a community.
Donald Trump does that.
He knows how important it is for people to have a job and how empowering that is.
And I think those two messages are probably the most important for this president in order to win and beat Joe Biden in November.
So a lot of our younger listeners have to be in universities or high schools, and they deal with liberals a lot of the time.
You know how to deal with people on the left better than anyone else.
What's some piece of advice?
What did you learn about dealing with the left?
I mean, you dealt with the most combative public part of this, but so many young people out there are under constant persecution for their conservative, for their constitutional, for their Christian or their pro-Trump beliefs.
What sort of lessons do you have for them on how to be able to either win an argument or be able to bridge the divide or communicate clearly to the other side?
Well, I think you know this better than anybody, Charlie.
You go into the lion's den on the daily basis and challenge a lot of these liberals and beat them.
I love all of the content and the videos because one of the things I think you do so well is you're well informed.
And I think that is such a important piece of winning the argument is the facts are on our side.
The information and the facts line up with conservative principles and conservative values on what will make this country better.
You do a spectacular job at making sure you're very well informed and you can poke holes in so many of the Democrats' arguments when you know what you're talking about.
The other thing, and it goes back to what I was saying before, know what you believe in and don't be afraid to speak out about it.
We cannot allow the liberal mob to bully us into thinking that we're somehow bad people because we believe in something.
And I think they need to find a community of people that believe like they do.
They're not alone, and they should know that there is a vast army of conservatives out there who believe in a smaller government, lower taxes, less government intrusion on our everyday life, a strong military, and believe in our faith and our freedom and what makes America special.
If people will find that community, find that support, and be vocal and stand up for what they believe in, I don't think anything could be more important for young people than figuring out who they are and not being afraid to talk about it.
Join The Conservative Army 00:02:02
Well, that's that's phenomenal.
So, my last question, Sarah.
And again, the book, I encourage everyone to check it out and to get a copy is speaking for myself.
And people can get the book anywhere.
I encourage them not to buy it on Amazon, but maybe they should if you want them to.
I just don't like giving money to Amazon is speaking for myself: faith, freedom, and the fight of our lives inside the Trump White House.
A lot of people are saying maybe Sarah Huckabee Sanders might be running for something.
Can you comment on it or just what are your thoughts?
You know, definitely serious about it.
But right now, my focus is 2020.
I want to help the president get reelected.
I want to make sure we hold on to the Senate.
And I'd love to see us take back the House and never have to utter the word Speaker Pelosi again.
So, right now, 2020 is my focus.
And after we get the president reelected, I will make a decision about what 2022 looks like and whether or not I'll run for governor here in Arkansas.
We have your back no matter what you do.
God bless you, Sarah.
Everyone, please pick up a copy of your book.
And it's so great to have fellow patriots that are fighting for our country.
And, you know, it's refreshing to have someone who has left the White House and has nice things to say about the president and good things and honest things.
So it's terrific.
And onward to victory.
God bless you, Sarah.
Thank you so much.
You bet.
Thanks so much for having me, Charlie.
Talk to you soon.
What a great conversation that was with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
If you guys want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com, tpusa.com.
tpusa.com is the hub for conservative education and organizing on campuses across the country.
tpusa.com is where we put our ideas on campuses in front of the left, challenging them on their own terrain.
We have professorwatchless.org and divestu.com.
So check out tpusa.com and please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com slash support.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
Make sure to listen to our sister episode today.
God bless.
Talk to you soon.
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