Trumpworld at war over Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ State of the Union rebuttal
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders took a needling after her response to Joe Biden's State of the Union address, but not just from the left – right-wing commentators also took her to task, even calling her not "intellectually capable" of responding to the president.
Ms Sanders rose to prominence as Donald Trump's White House press secretary before running a successful campaign to take over Arkansas' top office.
Her rebuttal to Mr Biden was laced with culture war bromides.
"Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn't start and never wanted to fight. Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is – your freedom of speech. That's not normal. It's crazy, and it's wrong," Ms Sanders said.
She said that the "dividing line in America is no longer between right and left – it's between normal or crazy."
What Ms Sanders apparently left out of her speech was the adoration of Mr Trump, according to her right-wing critics.
Steve Bannon, one of Mr Trump's former advisers and current host of the right-wing podcast "War Room", reviewed Ms Sanders' speech alongside his guest, former Fox Business anchor and Trump booster Lou Dobbs.
Mr Dobbs was fired from the network for spreading election conspiracies on air, Salon reports. The men were not impressed, with Bannon calling the rebuttal "terrible."
"If you're gonna give a counter speech, you gotta talk about important issues," Bannon said. "Don't get me wrong. The wokeism is very important. But it's not quite the heart of the matter right now, right? It's not the heart of the matter. She is not – and the reason is she's just not – she's not intellectually capable of going to the heart of the matter, right? Let's be blunt."
He also noted that she did not mention Mr Trump, who is angling to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
"It was an insult to President Trump," he said. "She does not exist politically if it was not for President Trump."
Mr Dobbs agreed, calling the speech a "great insult" to Mr Trump that she did not mention him. He issued a conspiratorial take suggesting the Republican Governors Association wrote the speech for her in order to boost Mr Trump's prospective opponent in 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
"It looked like the Governors Association had written that speech and aligned themselves with Ron DeSantis. It was a shame," he said.
Mr Bannon agreed, saying the speech felt like it was "written by Ron DeSantis and the entire RGA."
Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz, responded to the speech in an editorial for The Bulwark, noting that despite her claims that the right "never wanted" a culture war, it seemed as though she solely focused on culture issues while Mr Biden addressed concrete policy issues like the economy.
"These annual canned rebuttals usually come off as tone-deaf, but with Sanders, there was an additional, unexpected contrast with Biden. She spoke for a dreary 15 minutes – all scripted according to teleprompter, with no audience. Biden spoke for more than an hour, with a teleprompter in front of plenty of hostile Republicans," she wrote. "Biden, 80 years young, rolled with it, tackling every tough subject on his agenda, inviting Republicans to join him at every turn. Sanders, 40 years old, droned on, her entire speech devoted to demonizing Biden."
