Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Saunders claims she is working on “standard practices” for reports in an interview on Fox News on Friday.
“We’ll work with our team on that and certainly moving into Thanksgiving holiday we’ll see how long that process takes, but I think there are some just standard practices,” said Saunders while being interviewed by her father Mike Huckabee. Huckabee was filling in for Sean Hannity.
The interview also included a clip of Chris Wallace’s interview with the President that aired today. In it, the president re-iterated what Saunders said, stating that the White House has “to create rules and regulations for conduct, etc., etc.” for reporters, and that should Acosta or presumably other reports violate those rules, “we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference.”
Jim Acosta of CNN has been regularly criticized by the administration, which led to a heated confrontation in a White House press conference after the midterm election. In that confrontation, Acosta refused to cede the microphone to a White House aide.
In that incident, the White House claimed that the reporter had assaulted the aide, and Saunders shared an edited clip of the altercation, which was enhanced to make it appear as if Acosta had stuck the aide. The White House removed Acosta’s hard pass for access to the White House over the incident.
The White House later backed down on this claim, claiming that it removed the Hard Pass because Acosta asked too many questions.
Saunders also accused Acosta of not acting like an adult, and said that CNN should send another reporter as a result.
“Look, I think the very basic minimum is that if certain reporters like Jim Acosta can’t be adults, then CNN needs to send somebody in there who can be,” said Saunders.
She added, “They actually are one of the individual outlets that has the most hard passes of any news outlet in the country. CNN, they’re one of the top three, so the idea that they’re not able to get information that they need from the White House is laughable.”
The press room at the White House, according to Saunders, seats 49 reporters.
Watch the full report below:
Image via screen capture from video source.