White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox Thursday that President Trump “could not have been more presidential” in his response to the suspicious packages mailed to the Clintons, Obamas, and other prominent Democratic lawmakers who have been critical of the president.
Sanders was responding to a tweet from former CIA director John Brennan telling Trump to “look in the mirror” over the bomb scares and accusing him of “inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence.”
Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence. https://t.co/cS5qNiuU7o
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) October 25, 2018
“Look the president, I think, could not have been more presidential yesterday when he spoke to the American people,” Sanders said.
President Trump called for unity both in his remarks to reporters Wednesday and during his rally in Wisconsin Wednesday.
He called political violence "an attack on our democracy itself," and asked that "all sides to come together in peace and harmony."
"We're all behaving very well. And hopefully we can keep it that way," he told supporters, noting that he wasn’t yelling and was "trying to be nice."
“Let’s not get lost in who is responsible for this heinous act,” Sanders emphasized Thursday. “It is the person who made and sent these suspicious packages. Let’s not forget that this is ultimately the person that is responsible and will be held responsible by this administration.”
During the interview, she also argued that the media has not been “helpful for the American discourse” in general.
“Certainly the media has a role to play in this process,” she argued. “When 90 percent of their coverage of this president is negative despite the historic successes, when the ideas have perpetuated and continued negativity that is not helpful for the American discourse and certainly the president is calling on everyone to come together.”
Sanders also condemned a “disgraceful” statement from CNN’s President Jeff Zucker which partially blamed the White House and their attacks on the media for the attacks.
In a tweet Wednesday, Sanders said the network had chosen to “attack and divide.”
.@realDonaldTrump asked Americans “to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the USA” Yet you chose to attack and divide. America should unite against all political violence. https://t.co/Dlo3xwHyKi
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) October 25, 2018
“If you have a problem with one another let’s voice that but let’s do so peacefully and let’s do that at the ballot box,” she concluded.
A federal investigation is underway into the suspicious packages that have been sent to prominent Democrats and CNN which was addressed to Brennan. The package caused the network to evacuate their New York office Wednesday. According to the latest reports, a suspicious package was also sent to former Vice President Joe Biden.