Benje Choucroun was in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday and he was the TIME for Kids reporter inside of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s White House Press briefing. Sanders threw a joke to him: “I hope the questions aren’t as hard as when we had the bring your child to work day.” Choucroun is a 13-year-old student at Marin Country Day School in California, according to USA Today.
Benje Choucroun: At my school, we recently had a lockdown drill. One thing that affects mine and others' mental health is the worry that we or our friends could get shot at school. Specifically, can you tell me what the administration has done and will do to prevent these senseless tragedies?
Huckabee Sanders was visibly torn up as something inside of her likely remembered that her job at that moment was to lie through her teeth to this child. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was going to tell this young kid that she and the people she represents, the political party she is beholden to, are doing everything they can to stop the gun violence in our nation’s schools. Everybody knows that’s a lie. Everybody.
Sanders: I think that as a kid and certainly as a parent, there is nothing more terrifying than for a kid to go to school and not feel safe, so I'm sorry that you feel that way. This administration takes it seriously and the school safety commission that the president convened is meeting this week, again, an official meeting, to discuss the best ways forward and how we can do every single thing within our power to protect kids within our schools and to make them feel safe and to make their parents feel good about dropping them off.
Sanders is a parent herself. It’s interesting to watch how quickly she moves on, looking down at her talking points and trying to compose herself. That’s how you lie to the American people. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have done nothing, are doing nothing and will continue to do nothing to make anyone feel safer about the epidemic of gun violence in our country.
I am a parent and all I can tell you, Mrs. Sanders, is shame. Shame on you.