A Facebook item posted the other day by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, onetime Trump administration minister of disinformation and current Arkansas gubernatorial candidate, features a photo of Sanders grinning like a possum in front of her campaign truck. Prominent in the foreground is a supermarket sign advertising GUNS/AMMO.
The caption reads: “You know you’re in God’s country when you can get a 12 pack and a 12 gauge shotgun at your neighborhood Edward’s Food Giant!”
Yee-haw!
Within 48 hours of Sanders’ post, Arkansas saw a gunfight at an auto show down in Dumas: one dead and an astonishing 27 wounded — including a half-dozen little kids and a couple of grannies. Up in Rogers, three teenagers were arrested in a drive-by shooting. The body of a 14-year-old shot to death was found in North Little Rock. Another man was slain in Pine Bluff. There was a fatal shooting at a Hot Springs gas station.
Little Rock police reported that 20 handguns had been stolen from parked cars in the River Market district this year — so far. The chief begged the public to show some sense. He himself was recently involved in a shootout with a suspect who escaped unharmed.
In short, it was a pretty ordinary weekend here in God’s country. The Dumas episode was unusual; the rest not at all. So, if you think Sanders is embarrassed, then as Mark Twain put it, “You don’t know Arkansaw!”
For Sanders, the only controversial aspect of her imbecile Facebook post might be the 12-pack. A pious Baptist endorsing beer? If challenged, she’d probably claim she was talking about Dr. Pepper. She’s slippery like that.
On TV, Sanders is running a campaign commercial featuring her sternly forbidding her children from watching CNN. The state’s two Republican U.S. Senate candidates are shown in ads carrying guns around and boasting about their commitment to “open carry.” Both are former Razorback football players, and both love them some Trump. Fire away!
But what really distinguishes Sanders from the rest isn’t her enthusiasm for firearms. Even Bill Clinton feigned zeal for duck hunting — a pastime requiring rising before dawn and sitting silent for hours, neither a Clinton specialty. Rather, it’s Sanders’ unparalleled commitment to post-truth politics.
As Trump’s press secretary, Sanders lied almost as often as her boss. Her superpower is a combination of shamelessness and absolute contempt for journalists whose job, however imperfectly they do it, is to ascertain the truth. Remember back at the beginning, when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey?
Sanders piled on. “I can speak to my own personal experience,” she told the White House press corps. “I’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the president’s decision.” A reporter asked incredulously, “You personally have talked to ‘countless’ FBI officials, employees, since this happened?”
“Correct,” Sanders insisted with her trademark glare.
According to independent counsel Robert Mueller’s written report, however, Sanders told a different story under oath. Instead, she “acknowledged to investigators that her comments were not founded on anything.”
As people say in Arkansas, she’d flat made it up.
When reporters asked her to justify the Trump administration policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border, she invoked a completely nonexistent law supposedly requiring it. Then, when a reporter asked if, as a parent, she didn’t have compassion, she sneered that he was grandstanding to get on TV.
After journalists asked about Trump’s propensity for encouraging political violence in June 2017, Sanders stoutly maintained, “The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.”
This in the face of multiple instances of Trump urging his supporters to beat up protesters and journalists covering his rallies. He even promised to pay their legal expenses if they got arrested. Everybody’s seen him urging cops to rough up suspects. Again, there’s video.
But see, that’s the whole point. The brazen lying and the contempt are two sides of the same coin. Trump supporters don’t care that Sanders lied about FBI Director Comey. He’s a jerk that needed firing. And if nobody phoned the White House to say so, somebody should have.
It’s the same with immigrant children, who should have stayed in their sh**hole countries. A lot of people would like to beat up smart-mouth reporters. Recently, this column featured a Trump quote praising Vladimir Putin’s genius that I’d block-copied from a transcript. Angry readers accused me of making it up. Cultists believe whatever they need to.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin sums things up: “It’s the same playbook used by despots, dictators and demagogues in the modern era. Other tactics: Attack independent sources of information, undermine the notion of truth (alternate facts), appeal to nostalgia (for an imaginary past) and promote violence or the threat of violence.”
See, cultists both know and don’t know.
And what makes them furious is anybody who knows the difference.
(Email Gene Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.)
