| | | | Sarah Sanders' audience of one |  | | Sarah Sanders will leave her job as White House press secretary at the end of June, President Donald Trump announced via Twitter on Thursday afternoon.
"She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job," said Trump about Sanders.
That's debatable. What's less up for argument is that Sanders fundamentally changed the job of White House press secretary during her 23 months in the role. And not for the better.
Sanders replaced Sean Spicer in the job way back in July 2017. Spicer's tenure was, uh, rocky -- and for one very clear reason: He simply could not balance the desires of a President who demanded favorable coverage and a White House press corps committed to abiding by facts and not the spin provided by the administration. (Case in point: Spicer's fact-free assertion that more people attended Trump's inauguration than any other in history.)
What Sanders realized from the very start is that balancing between Trump and the media (and, by extension, the broader American public) wouldn't work. The way to stay in the job was to keep the President happy. Period.
So that's what she did. The President wasn't a fan of the daily press briefing. So, Sanders stopped doing it altogether. (On the day Trump announced she was leaving, Sanders hadn't done a daily press briefing in 94 straight days.) Trump didn't like admitting he, or anyone in his administration, had ever said something that was later proven to be false. So Sanders simply parroted the falsehoods pumped into the bloodstream by her boss. And on and on it went. Whatever Trump wanted, Sanders did.
It's very hard to describe how radical a shift that approach is -- for a job that had long been regarded as part partisan and part public trust. Spicer was not a good fit as press secretary. That's beyond reasonable doubt. But even he sought to find ways to work with reporters and get as much accurate information as he could out to the public. He gave it the old college try -- in the spirit of Mike McCurry, Dana Perino, Ari Fleischer and many others who have held the press secretary job in this modern era of cable TV and social media.
That's not to say all of those people had a warm and fuzzy relationship with the media -- or vice versa. That's not the job. It is to say, however, that all of those people tried to balance the public's right to know with their boss's policy and political interests. They failed at times. In some cases, often. But they also believed that a fundamental truth to the job was that they had two bosses: The President and the American public (as channeled through the White House press corps).
Sanders never even feigned a commitment to that two bosses idea. She served the President and no one else.
The Point: Sanders leaves the White House on great terms with her boss -- Trump pushed the idea of her running for governor of her home state of Arkansas when announcing her departure -- but with a legacy that will be rooted in an abandonment of a long-held core principle of who the White House press secretary actually works for.
-- Chris | | "I like the truth. You know, I'm actually a very honest guy."
-- President Donald Trump, whose complicated relationship with the truth has resulted in 10,796 false or misleading claims over 869 days. | | | ✅ FACT CHECK: OPPO RESEARCH? | | | We're focusing on the facts first with CNN fact checker Holmes Lybrand, who has the Point-exclusive lowdown on President Donald Trump's statement that he'd absolutely accept dirt about his political opponent from a foreign power.
Trump oddly argued on ABC News that it's totally kosher to listen to foreign governments who say they have dirt on your opposition -- no need to bother the FBI. "There isn't anything wrong with listening," said the President.
Um, nope. Ignoring the ethical questions on being cool with foreign governments trying to steer US elections, it's also probably against the law. It's illegal for foreign nationals to provide "a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value" in a US election. It would be really difficult to argue that juicy info that could harm or kill your opponent's campaign is not a "thing of value." Really hard.
(Why, dear reader, would you agree to meet in the first place if you didn't think the information could be valuable? In the famous words of Donald Trump Jr., "If it's what you say I love it.")
The hiccup? As special counsel Robert Mueller pointed out in his report, courts have not yet ruled specifically on whether oppo research falls under a "thing of value." Trump might give them a chance to in 2020.
Got a fact you want to see checked in The Point? Drop us a line: lauren.dezenski@cnn.com. | | Peter Navarro's on the rise in the Trump White House
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Also: Which presidential candidate tweets at Trump the most?
The long history of Fort Sill
That is a lot of Post-it notes
You must read the strange saga of Cliff Wife
The only three things banned from the Battle Bots arena? Glue, liquid nitrogen and EMP pulses | | | St. Louis won the Stanley Cup, and the Show-Me State's own Foxing gets the Tiny Desk treatment. | |  | Donald Trump's roadmap to a 2020 win | | The road to a 2020 victory may be narrower than in 2016 for Donald Trump. Here's why GOP pollsters have their eyes on Minnesota, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Nevada and Oregon.
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LAUREN'S CAMPAIGN TRAIL LATEST | | Steve Bullock: Is causing a ruckus after not qualifying for the DNC's first debates, saying his exclusion means Democrats haven't "learned our lesson from 2016."
Beto O'Rourke: Defended his decision to run for president instead of the US Senate, saying he believes a Democrat will still flip the Texas US Senate seat in 2020.
Kamala Harris: Has locked down the high-profile "Reckoning Crew" endorsement in South Carolina.
Julián Castro: Participates in a Fox News town hall from Tempe, Arizona, tonight.
Eric Swalwell: Is now calling for an impeachment inquiry to be opened against President Trump.
Pete Buttigieg: Will be endorsed by the Victory Fund, the group's first-ever presidential primary endorsement.
Howard Schultz: Says back surgery derailed his now-defunct independent 2020 campaign.
Bill Weld: Is opening up a New Hampshire campaign office in Manchester. | | | | | | |
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