Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as White House Press Secretary under Donald Trump, said that the president joked about her ‘taking one for the team’ after Kim Jong-un winked at her during a summit in Singapore in June 2018.
Sanders, who held her position between 2017 and 2019, has written about the details of her experience in the White House in Speaking for Myself, a memoir to be released next Tuesday. Excerpts have been provided to several news outlets.
In one chapter, the former press secretary details the 2018 Singapore summit, describing a moment when she and the North Korean leader “made direct eye contact and Kim nodded and appeared to wink” at Sanders.
On the way back to Air Force One, Sanders told Trump and White House chief-of-staff at the time, John Kelly, about the encounter.
“Kim Jong-un hit on you!” a delighted Trump joked, according to Sanders. “He did! He fucking hit on you!”
The two men “howled with laughter.”
“Well, Sarah, that settles it,” Ms Sanders recalls the president joking. “You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team! Your husband and kids will miss you, but you’ll be a hero to your country!”
Sanders also details how Trump unnerved Kim when he offered him a TicTac during the summit.
"Kim, confused, and probably concerned it was an attempt to poison him, wasn't sure how to respond," Sanders wrote. "The President dramatically blew into the air to reassure Kim it was just a breath mint and took a few from the box and popped them into his mouth. Kim reluctantly accepted the Tic Tac from President Trump and ate it."
Sanders was not overall critical of Donald Trump in her memoir. While acknowledging that the president “isn’t perfect” and “isn’t always easy,” she writes, “A second term for President Trump would be better for all Americans than the Democratic alternative.”
President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore Source: AAP
The former press secretary also stood-by her work as press secretary, claiming that she was readily available to the media and not “inaccessible” as news outlets claimed.
She writes: “Many in the press didn’t like to admit it, but we were regularly accessible to take their questions during my time in the White House.” And: “There are hundreds of reporters around the world who had my direct cell or email or could simply knock on the door of my office in the West Wing, so the notion that we weren’t accessible to the press is absurd.”
Sanders opens up about the toll her job took on herself and family. She outlines examples, like getting kicked out of a restaurant; a mother at her child’s school spitting on her windscreen; and her husband getting kicked out of his fantasy football league, “not because he worked for President Trump but because I did.”
