"I think my credibility is probably higher than the media's," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. "I think in large part that's because a lot of you guys spend more of your time focused on attacking the president than reporting the news.“ | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Sarah Sanders on inaccurate statement: ‘I’m an honest person’

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday repeatedly defended her credibility at a briefing with reporters, even as she was pressed on an apparently false statement she gave months ago.

“I’m an honest person,” Sanders said as she declined several times to explain her assertion in August that President Donald Trump did not dictate a statement about a June 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr. had with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who had offered dirt on Hillary Clinton.


The statement misleadingly said that the meeting was focused on adoption issues. Trump’s lawyers subsequently said in memo to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team — sent in January and made public by The New York Times over the weekend — that Trump himself dictated the misleading statement, contradicting Sanders’ assertion that the president “certainly didn’t dictate” it.

Sanders added on Tuesday that she “works extremely hard to provide you with accurate information at all times.”

“I’m going to continue to do that, but I’m not going to engage on matters that deal with the outside counsel,” she said in the briefing.

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She accused reporters of trying to get her to discuss the special counsel’s investigation, and she deployed a dodge that she frequently uses at the podium, asserting that she works “every day” to provide the best information she can.

And she quickly directed her anger toward the press.

“Frankly, I think my credibility is probably higher than the media’s,” Sanders said later in the briefing. “I think in large part that’s because a lot of you guys spend more of your time focused on attacking the president than reporting the news. I think that if you spent a little bit more of your time reporting the news than trying to tear me down, you might actually see that we’re working hard to provide you good information.”

The White House and the president have, in fact, frequently spread false or misleading information and have refused to correct inaccurate statements.

Sanders is not the first White House official to struggle with delivering accurate information on behalf of Trump. Former press secretary Sean Spicer also dealt with the issue of delivering or defending information that later proved false. Trump himself acknowledged that his spokespeople would not always be accurate.

“As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump tweeted in May 2017 after aides asserted that he had fired FBI director James Comey because of the deputy attorney general’s recommendation. Trump said soon afterward that he would have fired Comey regardless of the recommendation.

The difficulty of the job is one reason there has been so much turnover in Trump’s communications and press operations — he is on his second press secretary and quickly cycled through four communications directors. That post currently sits unfilled.

Maria Curi contributed to this report.