In this Dennis Prager Show interview, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders discusses her memoir "Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House" and offers a candid assessment of the modern media landscape. Sanders argues that the press has abandoned its core role of reporting news, becoming an opinion‑driven attack machine against President Trump. She describes the White House press corps as increasingly vitriolic, chaotic, and disrespectful, noting that the level of hostility was unprecedented compared to previous administrations. When asked to rank outlets, she singles out CNN as the worst, accusing it of acting as a partisan attack dog for the Democratic elite. Sanders also reflects on her personal interactions with journalists, describing a mix of collegial familiarity and public humiliation, such as the experience at the Correspondents' Dinner. Finally, she links media hostility to broader political polarization, portraying the far‑left as angry and dangerous, and warning that a shift toward a Biden administration could exacerbate these trends. The interview blends personal anecdotes, media criticism, and political commentary.
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A woman has gone through a modern auto-da-fé. During the Spanish Inquisition, they would put people through fires. So that's how I regard being the press secretary to Donald Trump. And she has her memoirs out, as it were, Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House. That's good stuff. Sarah, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Thank you so much. It's great to be on with you and good to hear your voice.
Well, that's very kind. Your father and I are, are pretty close. I'm a big admirer of his and he's been very kind to me.
It's very mutual. I know he's a big fan of yours and, uh, appreciates all that you do.
Well, thank you for that. I want to ask you, if I could ask you one question, this is the question. I have many, but if I could ask you one, this is the one it would be. What do you think of the press? I'm not kidding. And I mean as people. I think very low of them, but I have not interacted with them. So what do you think of them?
Well, I think that the press plays a very important role in society. Unfortunately, I think they have cheapened that role by making so much of their job to attack the president instead of to report the news. So often the lines have become completely blurred between news and opinion. It's very hard to find a story where you don't have the opinion of the press injected into the story anymore. And I think that's a big problem in journalism. As people, there are certainly some very good people that happen to also be reporters, but unfortunately a lot of the loudest ones in the group, the ones that most people see, the people that we hear from a lot, the Jim Acostas of the world, I think they decided that they would rather be the story than report the story, and they decided the best way to do that was to go after this president and everyone around him day in and day out. And I think that that is a true disappointment and a real shame and a disservice to the American people.
So then, would you say— and I have no idea how you will answer this— were you surprised When, when you served as press secretary, did, did you expect better?
I definitely was surprised. I certainly knew that there would be tension. There's always been tension between the White House press corps and the administration. However, the level of vitriol was different. The discourse was different. Even when we were traveling, I'll never forget, we were in another country A country that's very used to— I don't want to out this individual, but the communications director for a European country that's used to dealing with the press said, "I've never seen anything like this." He said, "The difference between how they treat President Trump and how they treat President Obama is night and day. This is insane. I've never seen a press corps act like this." It got where they even were rude to their colleagues, disrupting interrupting one another, trying to get a question in, in the briefing. It's one of the reasons the president decided to stop the briefings for a while, is because they got into the— just to be a total circus. And they were very disrespectful to the people that were speaking, myself included. And he just didn't feel like it was a good use and a good way to get the message out.
So I'm going to put you on the spot. You said earlier there are some good people in the press. Can you name any?
I could, but then I would ruin their reputation. If somebody like me says anything good about somebody in the press, it'll probably hurt us both. But, and again, there— I'm not saying that's the vast majority, but there are definitely some good people that still work in the press. Some of them, um, I think you could probably narrow down on your own a couple of the good ones. But I think, again, one of the things that is such a challenge is finding people who are actually just reporting the news. And a lot of times we would hear somebody say, but my story doesn't say anything. I'd say, yeah, but the 50 tweets that you put out before noon do. And you can't separate that when you have a public account constantly attacking the president, attacking the people that work for the president, and then say, but this one, you know, 400-word story is news. You can't separate that. And I think that's a real problem.
All right, so you can't, for understandable reasons, you cannot name the best. I'm not asking you to name the worst by name, but by organization. It's like, is the New York Times worse than the Washington Post? Is the Washington Post worse than the LA Times? Is NBC worse than all of them? How would you rank the worst— worstitude?
Well, I, I would definitely put CNN at the top of that list, uh, as the worst. They decided that they no longer wanted to be a news organization, but they wanted to be an attack dog for the Democrat Party, for the liberal elites, and that is what they have I think they decided they hated this president more than they love this country, and they spend every single day, no matter how good things are going, attacking him. That doesn't mean that on occasion you don't have a couple of people on CNN who try to make the other side try to make the other point, but by and large, I think they're one of the worst as a whole as an outlet.
Did you ever socialize with any of these people?
Certainly. I mean, we spent a lot of our days together. I mean, that's one of the points I write about in my book. In particular, ahead of the Correspondents' Dinner, the people that were in the room, Michelle Wolf excluded, we all knew each other. They knew me. I spent almost every day working back and forth with these people. I knew their hobbies. I knew their family stories. They knew mine. I wasn't the outsider in that moment. And there's certainly some collegial moments that take place because you're traveling together, you're spending when you spend so much time working together that you have those moments. And I try to paint that picture as well. But I was not the outsider that came into that room, which was another reason that moment was so disheartening, is I was their invited guest sitting at that head table only to be mocked at the worst way possible by another woman for my appearance, for my makeup, everything. And, you know, to be in front of people that I considered in large part my colleagues was again very frustrating and very disheartening.
Yeah. You will never get this question from anyone else. I'm warning you in advance, but in light of what you just said, and my, my listeners know that I have a theory on this, there's a lot of meanness on the left. So I, ask myself, and now I'm asking you, do you think that mean people gravitate left or left makes decent people mean?
That may be one of the hardest questions I've had, and I wouldn't have expected my hardest question to come from somebody who I usually align with. But, you know, I think that they are so focused on the destruction of people, and it is all in the name of tolerance, as long as you agree with them. I have never seen a group of people like the far left. Certainly, we have people on the far right that are very intense, very focused on their message. But the far left, like you said, is so angry and so negative that they are willing to burn cities to the ground, willing to see innocent people hurt, all in the name of getting their message out there. And I find it again a very sad place in America. I think it's one of the reasons this election is so important, so consequential, is that we are at a crossroads of either continuing as a country of safety and security and prosperity, or we're going to move to the left under Joe Biden. And not even necessarily because he's so far radical, although I think he is, but because he's so afraid to stand up for the people that are. And if we don't have somebody in that place that's willing to take on willing to take on that anger that we have in President Trump, I'm very afraid of what America looks like if they get control and they get to continue to bully Americans from coast to coast.
God, is that ever true. The book by Sarah Huckabee Sanders is Speaking for Myself. Also got some great photos in it. It's really well done. Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House.
