Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House by Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Author:Sarah Huckabee Sanders [Sanders, Sarah Huckabee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Women in Politics, Political Ideologies, Conservatism & Liberalism, Biography & Autobiography, Presidents & Heads of State
ISBN: 9781250271341
Google: oIXJDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1250271339
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-08T05:00:00+00:00

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Gina Haspel, a thirty-year veteran of the CIA, was also a strong pick to lead our nation’s top spy agency. Gina faced a tough Senate confirmation battle and the White House counsel’s office, led by Don McGahn, worried she couldn’t get through confirmation because of operational work she’d done at the agency. At one difficult point in the process, Gina told Pompeo she planned to withdraw as the president’s nominee because she didn’t want the focus on the controversy to hurt the reputation of the CIA. Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, and I had read everything in her file and firmly disagreed with McGahn’s assessment. We were on the phone with Pompeo and explained why it was a bad idea for her to withdraw. There was nothing in her file we couldn’t vigorously defend. He said we should make that case to Gina directly, and to meet him at CIA headquarters immediately. I canceled my date with my husband to a cocktail party at Deputy White House Chief of Staff Chris Liddell’s house at the moment our babysitter was walking in the door. “I’m not going to be able to come,” I said. “I can’t answer any questions or tell you why. I won’t be at the office and I won’t have my phone. I’m really sorry.”

Marc, his deputy Mary Elizabeth, and I rushed to CIA headquarters at Langley, and the three of us along with Pompeo urged Haspel not to quit. After making our case, she finally agreed to sleep on it. The next day Gina called me and said she had changed her mind. She had decided to stay in and fight, and was ultimately confirmed by the Senate to be the first woman ever to lead the CIA.

One of Pompeo’s first missions for the president as his top diplomat was to secretly fly to North Korea over Easter to meet with Kim Jong-un. The goal was to set the stage for a first-ever summit between the leaders of the United States and North Korea. After Pompeo returned to the United States, news of the secret mission leaked. The president called me into the Oval, and when I came in Pompeo was there. He held three photographs of him with Kim Jong-un. He handed them to me. We talked about their meeting, and I couldn’t stop asking questions. The president asked me what I thought, and how people were reacting to the leak of Pompeo’s meeting with Kim Jong-un. I told him that so far it was playing well and further demonstrated that the maximum pressure campaign was working. The president told me to release the pictures and confirm Pompeo’s meeting on the record with the media. Pompeo teased me not to lose the photos because those were the only ones he had and there wasn’t a digital file. I personally walked the photos to the Lower Press office and worked with staff to get them scanned and watched as they were distributed far and wide and started appearing on news programs across the country throughout the day.

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