White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she did not want to "relitigate the Civil War" during Tuesday's press briefing, but she spent a hefty amount of time doing just that. Sanders was answering questions following White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's comments Monday evening defending Confederate general Robert E. Lee as an "honorable man" and claiming the Civil War occurred because of "the lack of an ability to compromise."
After arguing to Glenn Thrush of The New York Times that "all of our leaders have flaws" to defend Kelly's appraisal of Lee, Sanders was next pressed by NPR's Mara Liasson, who asked whether the hypothetical solution Kelly was envisioning was "to leave the Southern states slave and the Northern states free." "What was the compromise that could have been made?" Liasson asked. Sanders pointed to "many historians" who "agree that a failure to compromise was a cause of the Civil War," saying that "there are a lot of different versions of those compromises":
NBC's Hallie Jackson then asked Sanders directly whether the White House would at least "acknowledge" that Kelly's comments were "deeply offensive to some folks, and historically inaccurate." "No," Sanders flatly replied, before deriding "the media" for wanting to "push that this is some sort of a racially charged and divided White House." She asserted that Kelly's comments had been "taken out of context" and called the controversy "absurd and disgraceful":
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
As Sanders left the lectern to signal the end of the briefing, American Urban Radio Networks' April Ryan yelled a final question: "Does this administration think that slavery was wrong?" Sanders did not reply.
-
A guide to the Great Wall of ChinaThe Week Recommends Experience this architectural feat
-
What are blue slips and why does Trump want to end them?Today's Big Question The practice lets senators block a president's judge and prosecutor nominees
-
What are 'freakosystems' and how are they affecting the planet?The explainer Ecosystems are changing permanently
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talkSpeed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposesspeed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wifespeed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play
