White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders addresses reporters during her daily press conference on Sept. 5. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders addresses reporters during her daily press conference on Sept. 5. Getty Images
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Did White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders really tell reporters it was wrong to question a general? That’s exactly what Sanders appeared to say at a White House press conference Friday afternoon when asked about Chief of Staff John Kelly’s dramatic and controversial comments on Thursday in which he blasted a female Democratic congresswoman over the president’s phone call to an Army widow.
“If you want to attack General Kelly, that’s up to you, but if you want to debate a four-star Marine general, I think that’s highly inappropriate,” Huckabee Sanders said when asked about the inaccuracies in Kelly’s comments. Kelly is in fact retired from the military and working as a civilian.
Kelly took the podium in the White House briefing room to stand by his explanation for President Donald Trump’s call to Myeisha Johnson, the widow of Army Sergeant La. David T. Johnson, who was killed in Niger earlier this month. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., a longtime family friend of Johnson’s, was in the car when the president called to offer his condolences. Wilson criticized the president’s call, claiming he did not know the name of the soldier who was killed.
Sanders: “If you want to debate a four-star Marine general, I think that’s highly inappropriate.”
Amazing. https://t.co/YlIZ3zy30q
— Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) October 20, 2017
Mr. Kelly forcefully defended the president’s intentions without directly refuting Mr. Wilson’s account of the call, but he accused Mr. Wilson of being a show-off who hogged the spotlight at the dedication of an FBI building in Miami in 2009. Video of the ceremony backed up Mr. Kelly’s claims.
Huckabee Sanders said the video was inconclusive and didn’t capture everything that happened at the ceremony. She also criticized Wilson, who is known for his colorful cowboy-style hats, calling the veteran senator “all hats and no substance,” a term that means no substance.
“There was a lot of hype,” Huckabee Sanders said.[Kelly] I was surprised that she took the opportunity to talk about herself.”
Ironically, then-presidential candidate Trump criticized then-four-star General John Allen for speaking out in support of Hillary Clinton in 2016. “His Record = Bad,” Trump tweeted at the time. Allen has since retired and been named president of the Brookings Institution.