May 03, 2018 03:11 PM UTC

Nobody Knows Anything in This White House

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• by: Colorado Pols

President Trump has compartmentalized information to basically himself and whomever else he is talking with at any given moment, which is making things very awkward for…well, for everybody. As Politico explains:

“We give the very best information that we have at the time.”

That was White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ response when ABC reporter Jonathan Karl asked her in Thursday’s press briefing how the American people could trust a president and White House that “show what appears to be a blatant disregard for the truth.”

It was a line she repeated again and again in her 17 minutes of taking questions from reporters in the briefing, the first since it was revealed that President Donald Trump had repaid Michael Cohen for the $130,000 in hush money the lawyer delivered to porn star Stormy Daniels — something both Trump and Sanders had previously denied knowledge of.

Not just in Thursday’s briefing, but overall, “the best information we have at the time” has become something of a go-to line for Sanders—her version of apparently throwing up her arms in the face of a president who has proved not only impulsive and prone to changing his mind, but who has exhibited an unprecedented propensity for falsehoods. As his official spokesperson, Sanders’ performance in Tuesday’s briefing left some reporters further questioning not just the president’s credibility, but also that of his press secretary and the entire White House.

Of course, today was not the first time that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stood in front of reporters with her best “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ face.” Yet, it appears we are nearing a consensus that there is little reason to believe that Sanders actually speaks for the President at all. Following Sanders’ regular briefing today, CNN Political Director David Chalian said on the air that Sanders “has lost credibility with the American people and the reporters in that room.” That’s not hard to argue given some of these answers today:

Sarah Sanders said she learned about Trump’s repayment to Cohen yesterday (during Rudy Giuliani’s interview) https://t.co/ZEhYsug9ZX

— Meg Wagner (@megwagner) May 3, 2018

As the Washington Post reports, Sanders is essentially admitting that she does not receive accurate information from President Trump:

We have seen claims of ignorance from behind the White House press briefing room’s podium before. That was the case in the aftermath of the botched explanations for FBI director James B. Comey’s firing. Sanders also offered a version of this when her explanations of the Rob Porter fiasco fell apart.

“We’re giving you the best information that we’re going to have,” Sanders said then, echoing what she said Thursday. “Obviously the press team’s not going to be as read-in, maybe, as some other elements, at a given moment, on a variety of topics. But we relay the best and most accurate information that we have, and we get those from those individuals.”

Sanders was also unable to confirm comments from new Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that three American prisoners in North Korea may soon be released.