Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Gavin Newsom is running for president. Sure, he hasn’t announced it and has claimed he’s “all in” for Biden, but he’s increasingly taking time off from personally disrupting the nation’s Dapper Dan supply chain in order to weigh in on national issues, measure the drapes, and attempt to troll Republican governors. His latest salvo, directed toward Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was sworn in as Arkansas’ governor about 15 minutes ago, claims that “While [Sanders] touts public safety, here is what she skips over: Arkansas has the one of the highest murder rates in the nation.” This is, of course, true. In 2020, the last year for which CDC stats are available, Arkansans have a much greater chance of being murdered than Californians.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, announced yesterday on Twitter that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, would be departing her job at the end of the month. He later, at a press conference about a new program to help felons reenter the work force, praised her as a 'magnificent person' who has done 'an incredible job.' Taking the podium, Ms Sanders expressed her admiration for the president and his agenda and said, tears in her eyes, that working for him had been 'the honor of a lifetime.' Pretty straight forward, right? Wrong. The press hates Sarah Sanders. Like its hatred for Donald Trump, the detestation is reflexive, visceral, and in the deepest sense aesthetic, a matter of immediate feeling.

A lot of Washingtonians think that, were it not for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, you wouldn’t have a Trump presidency. It sounds hyperbolic, and the theory has been disputed, but Trump watchers still believe that President Obama’s roasting of Donald Trump at the correspondents' dinner in 2011 spurred Trump to seek the Republican nomination. Trump’s epic pride was so wounded by Obama’s barbs that it made him determined to take revenge. And he did. This year the Correspondents’ dinner has given Trump’s power another boost. I’m sure Michelle Wolf wouldn’t have wanted to help the 45th President: she probably just wanted to make herself more famous.