MSNBC Panel Compares Sarah Sanders to Baghdad Bob: ‘I Don’t Know the Difference Anymore’
On Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders repeatedly dodged questions from the press regarding White House staffer Kelly Sadler‘s vile remarks about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
One of the most dogged reporters in the room was Kristen Welker, who at one point asked Sanders if President Donald Trump bears “responsibility for the tone set here at the White House and all of the staffers who work here?”
Her repeated efforts to try to nail down a response from Sanders did not go unnoticed.
Joined by Welker after the briefing, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and NBC News’ National Affairs Analyst John Heilemann wondered aloud how Welker and her colleagues could sit there and put up with it day after day.
“I don’t know the difference anymore between Baghdad Bob and Sarah Sanders,” Wallace said, prompting Heilemann to agree and call the whole press briefing experience a “horror show.”
“They do valiant work every day trying to get some semblance of truth or to at least expose the hypocrisy and lies, the Baghdad Bobness of it from the podium. But if you’re asking me how they tolerate it, how they live with it…they have more fortitude than I have,” Heilemann continued on before suggested he would “slit his throat” if he had to put up with it.
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt then chimed in, noting the difference between Baghdad Bob and Sanders is that while Baghdad Bob had no choice, “Sanders is lying of her own volition.”
“I’ll tell you the difference between Sarah Sanders and Baghdad Bob is that if Baghdad Bob didn’t say what Saddam Hussein wanted him to say Baghdad Bob would be shot,” Schmidt told his fellow panelists.
He continued on: “Baghdad Bob was a hostage. Sarah Sanders is an accomplice. As is the entirety of the political operation of the White House. They’re all in it together. They serve in a debased administration that’s dividing the country, hurting America, pitting Americans against each other because obviously, that’s what they believe is the right thing to do, for them to maintain the prerequisites and perks of their powerful positions. That’s what the difference is.”
Watch above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]
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