Vox: Mueller report: the controversy about a Sarah Sanders lie, explained

Even at the time, Sanders’s claim about Comey not having the support of the FBI agents was implausible. It was almost immediately contradicted during congressional testimony by Comey’s successor, Andrew McCabe, and as the exchange in the below video indicates, reporters made it clear during a press briefing that they didn’t buy what she was trying to sell them.

When the time came for Sanders to be interviewed under oath by investigators working for the special counsel, her story suddenly changed. She told the special counsel’s team that her comment about FBI agents contacting her to express concerns about Comey was actually a “slip of the tongue” that was not based on anything. So she acknowledged pushing a falsehood to Mueller’s team, but said it was just an accident.

During a string of media appearances last week, Sanders stuck to her “slip of the tongue” talking point. She was grilled about its implausibleness by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during an interview on Friday, but bizarrely tried to pin blame for her lie on Democrats, saying ,“I’m sorry I wasn’t a robot like the Democratic Party that went out for two-and-a-half years and stated time and time again that there was definitely Russian collusion between the president and his campaign, that they had evidence to show it, and that the president and his team deserved to be in jail.”

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Vox: Sarah Sanders is upset a restaurant wouldn’t serve her. She’s OK with it happening to gays.

 happen to believe that food establishments should offer their goods to anyone willing to pay for them. Sanders does not. She thinks it’s okay, for example, for a business to hang a sign in their window saying they won’t serve gay couples. This is why, on one level, her very public dig at the owner of the Red Hen, which set off a torrent of hate tweets and threats her way, is ridiculous. It’s hypocrisy. [...]

The irony of restaurant-gate is that Sanders supports the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado. The owner of the Red Hen, Stephanie Wilkinson, told the Washington Post one reason she asked Sanders to leave was because of Sanders’s stances on gay rights. The staff includes several gay workers. The staff was also deeply upset about Sanders’s defense of Trump’s family separation policy, she said. [...]

Sanders sees a constitutional right under the First Amendment to chose who to serve and not serve in a business. But on Friday, she made no mention of this context. She made no attempt to distinguish the two. Instead, she took an opportunity to fan divisions between the White House’s base and everyone else.

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