‘This is not traditional political game…. this is a street-gutter game…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) White House correspondent April Ryan spent much of her visit to “The Daily Show” sniping at Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday, while casting herself and her fellow journalists as victims of press oppression.
“The lack of respect for someone who understands Washington is evident in that briefing room,” she said, while also accusing Sanders of “pres-splainin‘” the comments made by President Donald Trump.
Although characterizing her relationship with past administrations as “friendly-adversarial” and calling herself “an equal-opportunity offender,” Ryan has not shied away from rude and disruptive conduct during recent press briefings.
“This administration, for some strange reason, they’re lumped into the same boat as the others…. but they’ve taken it to another degree,” she said.
A month into Trump’s presidency, Ryan asked former Press Secretary Sean Spicer if Trump was a racist for using the word “we” to describe those who built America.
After asking a loaded question about NFL kneeling and refusing to let Sanders answer, she complained about being called “rude.”
Ryan even became an internet meme after sending out a tweet demanding proof that Sanders had baked a pie for Thanksgiving.
But it seems Ryan, who works for the American Urban Radio Networks and is a CNN analyst, wants to have her pie and eat it to.
“What’s happened to me has not happened to many of the other reporters in the room. … They put a target on my head.”
Despite her assertion to “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah that “This is not traditional political game…. this is a street-gutter game,” she claimed to have been unfairly singled out by the White House because of her race.
“Washington has been—and still is—a white male-dominated town,” she said. “Even when Barack Obama was president of the United States, it was still a white male-dominated town, and for many, they don’t want to relinquish what has been tradition or history.”
Sanders has herself been subjected to unprecedented attacks, both from the increasingly partisan press and beyond.
Then-unknown comedian Michelle Wolf lampooned Sanders’s personal appearance at the White House Press Correspondent’s dinner in April.
Sanders also triggered a boycott and massive Yelp attack on a Virginia restaurant in June by tweeting that it had refused to serve her.
Ryan said she had attempted to mend fences with Sanders by dining with her.
“When we had dinner—we broke bread—we tried to come together on the commonality. We talked about church, we talked about ourselves, we talked about our death threats.”
However, she said the effort failed … through no fault of her own.
“The reason why we could never move past all of this animosity is because she’s playing to her boss, the president of the United States of America, who clearly tells her he does not like me, who clearly says things—you know, ‘Treat her this way.’”