AP Photo/Andrew Harnik Primary Source I Got Smeared by Sarah Huckabee Sanders Conservative women, don’t kid yourselves. Her record has been shameful.

Amanda Carpenter is a CNN contributor and former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) .

If Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ departure as White House press secretary meant she would be leaving public life, I’d be toasting her goodbye this week. Unfortunately, since it probably represents only a brief pause in her now well-established history of sliming people, a firm marker should be laid down about her right now.

Sanders reportedly is considering following in her father’s footsteps and running for governor in her home state of Arkansas, where Mike Huckabee served from 1996-2007. With high built-in name ID and the benefit of riding President Donald Trump’s coattails in a ruby red state, she is already talked about as the favorite in the race, which isn’t until 2022. This says far more about the sorry state of our political system than it does about any merits she has as a potential candidate. The barrage of lies she told from the White House podium would disqualify her from any industry but politics.


Of course, a lot of politicians lie. Sanders, however, has participated in mean-spirited, personal and cruel lies that have hurt people. I know firsthand. It’s an experience I’m not eager to recall. But people need to know, especially potential Arkansas voters. She smeared me, she smeared others and, given the opportunity, she’ll most likely do it again.

Back in the spring of 2016, in the height of the GOP presidential primary, the National Enquirer, a rag we now know took tremendous efforts to support Trump, published my likeness on its front page and insinuated that I had had an affair with my former boss and Trump’s then-campaign rival, Senator Ted Cruz. It was 100 percent false without a shred of evidence supporting the allegation. Still, Trump supporters furiously fanned the falsehood online. I was abruptly confronted by a Trump supporter about the story on CNN, where I work as a contributor, and was forced to respond live on air.

Trump claimed he had nothing to do with the story, but he said the tabloid had been right to expose other affairs and suggested Cruz was an evangelical hypocrite. Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, one of the president’s longest White House employees today, retweeted a video to his hordes of followers that used photos of me to suggest, absurdly, that I was lying. A cacophony of pro-Trump forces had come together to gaslight me and feast on the media explosion.

As so often happens when a woman is unfairly attacked, the burden fell on me to clear my name. It was an absolutely infuriating position to be in, but I was not about to be driven from the public space over something that had never happened. Trump supporters wanted nothing more than to force me, a committed NeverTrumper, off the air. So, I went back on television to defend myself, sitting for an interview with Jake Tapper to discuss the harrowing episode. It was the hardest day of my entire professional life—and it was made even more painful by Sanders.

That afternoon, Sanders happened to be scheduled for an interview with Tapper as well and was asked about fake news her campaign was pushing. Sanders, a wife, a mother, a conservative, a Christian and a political staffer—just like I am—twisted the knife. She intoned that it was my responsibility to clean up and shifted the blame, saying, “For the sake of both Amanda and Senator Cruz’s family, I think that they should fight back and sue the National Enquirer on this false story.” She also claimed to have no knowledge of what Scavino had done. Then, she chalked up the entire thing to the scummy business of politics at large and slammed Cruz’s team as “one of the dirtiest and nastiest campaigns out there.”

So much for conservative women supporting each other. Forgive me if I mute every tweet from her female admirers wondering why Sanders isn’t getting glowing magazine spreads and fawning red carpet commentary from the female press. If she wanted women to support women, she had the chance. She passed. No wonder people are passing on her.

Forget me for a second, though. Sanders has outright lied throughout her time as press secretary. She had the jaw-dropping audacity to lie about FBI agents in spring 2017, when she stood in front of the national press corps and offered an absurd pretense for the firing of Director James Comey, saying that “countless” agents had “lost confidence in their director” over his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Under oath, she later admitted she had made up the statement “in the heat of the moment,” and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators concluded her statement “was not founded on anything.”

These are just two examples in a long line of Sanders’ casual smears against perceived opponents. Let’s not forget how she tweeted a video that analysts said had been doctored to suggest that CNN correspondent Jim Acosta had inappropriately grappled with a White House intern over a microphone during a live briefing. Or how Sanders adopted Trump’s talking point that the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct or assault are lying. Or how often she deflected legitimate questions by suggesting that those who posed them had nefarious motives. And her response after the release of the Mueller report? Using the White House as a backdrop for an interview on “Fox & Friends,” she called the Democrats “sore losers” and “a sad excuse for a political party.”

Sanders never rose to the level of professionalism exhibited by diligent, respectful people who previously held her position. She became an echo of internet trolls.

Many Republicans will say Sanders performed about as well as anyone could under a difficult boss who demands total loyalty and under the most challenging of circumstances. I do not accept that. She is a woman in control of herself, and she willingly opted to make disrespect for others the defining characteristic of her tenure as White House press secretary. That’s all on her. She wasn’t conscripted into service for Trump; she enthusiastically volunteered.

I’m not waiting for an apology. It’s obvious Sanders is not a bit sorry for her disgraceful work.

After failing to perform her basic job as a press secretary and refusing to hold a briefing for a record 94 days as of the day she announced her resignation earlier this month, Sanders was asked recently whether she had any regrets about stonewalling the press. She said it was more important that the American people hear from the president directly, rather than from her. “No one elected me to anything,” she told reporters.

That’s a statement that will, hopefully, remain true—because there is no reason to believe Sanders would change her ways if elected governor. Arkansas, you’ve been warned.