Sarah Huckabee Sanders Accused of ‘Freezing Out’ LGBT News Organization

‘The Washington Blade Has Effectively Been Iced Out’

The Chief Political and White House Reporter for the Washington Blade is accusing Sarah Huckabee Sanders of allowing her personal anti-LGBT animus get in the way of her duties as White House press secretary. Chris Johnson, in a rare move for the credentialed White House reporter, on Monday afternoon wrote, “the Washington Blade has effectively been iced out from asking questions in the White House briefing room under the Trump administration.”

For those who regularly watch the White House daily press briefings, Johnson was frequently called on by press secretaries in the Obama administration. “President Obama called on me himself during his final press conference,” Johnson writes. Even in the Trump administration, as Johnson notes, Sean Spicer would call on him. 

That’s changed since Sarah Huckabee Sanders took over.

“Many times during the briefings, I see Sanders look directly at me as I raise my hand for a question, but she nonetheless skips me for another reporter, usually from a conservative, Trump-friendly outlet like Breitbart or Newsmax,” Johnson observes. 

He says he hasn’t been able to get a question answered at the podium for five months.

Why does it matter?

“The White House refuses to take inquiries from the only LGBT publication in the White House at a time when the administration continuously rolls out anti-LGBT policies,” Johnson writes. “Among them is a ban on transgender military service; a rollback of LGBT civil rights protections at the Justice Department; sending an attorney to a federal court in New York to argue firing people for being gay is perfectly legal; and new ‘religious freedom’ guidance that essentially green lights the denial of services to LGBT people.”

“LGBT Americans deserve to have our questions answered at the White House regardless of which administration is in power — and this freezing out of our publication must stop,” Johnson adds.

What’s behind the Blade being ignored?

Johnson says “there might be something more to ignoring the Blade: Sanders herself, as documented by the LGBT media watchdog GLAAD, has an anti-gay record. Is that influencing her decision on whom to call on during the briefings?”

He notes that Huckabee Sanders previously had “headed the American Principles Fund, a Super PAC with ties to the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage that essentially attacked Republican candidates for not being anti-gay enough.”

Blade readers may remember in 2013 the very public feud between Liz Cheney when she was running for a U.S. Senate seat in Wyoming and her lesbian sister Mary Cheney over same-sex marriage. To Mary’s chagrin, Liz opposed same-sex marriage — even though the candidate stopped short of endorsing a Federal Marriage Amendment to ban it nationwide.

But that opposition wasn’t good enough for Sanders and the American Principles Fund, which aired a 30-second TV attack ad against Liz Cheney and accused of her abandoning the GOP on social issues for declining to support a Federal Marriage Amendment.

“The unilateral truce on social issues within the GOP is bad for our party and wrong for our country – our core values are under attack, and we will stand for those who stand for what’s right,” Huckabee Sanders said in a statement at the time.

The Blade has been published for nearly five decades, longer than many of the far right wing media outlets from which Huckabee Sanders often takes questions. It’s time this White House took the LGBT community seriously.

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