April Ryan, a CNN contributor and White House reporter for American Urban Radio Networks, is accusing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders of targeting her personally with what she sees as a threat of physical violence.
“Why is it I’m asking similar types of questions like all the rest of the room [of reporters] but she’s coming at me that way?” Ryan asked in an interview Friday with the Washington Examiner. “Why? What did I do differently than anyone?”
Ryan, a veteran on the White House beat, gets in regular confrontations with White House officials, including Sanders and former communications aide Omarosa Manigault.
Ryan on Thursday got in another one with Sanders at the day’s press briefing after asserting that Sanders had been “blindsided” by new White House lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who had said President Trump reimbursed another one of his lawyers for payments to the porn actress Stormy Daniels. Sanders had said she wasn’t aware of the reimbursements until she saw Giuliani talking about them on Fox News.
“You were blindsided,” Ryan insisted to Sanders. “You said yourself you were blindsided.”
“I actually didn’t use that term,” Sanders replied.
“Well, I said it, but you were blindsided, from what you said,” said Ryan.
“Well, with all due respect, you actually don’t know much about me in terms of what I feel and what I don’t,” said Sanders before moving on.
That night on CNN, Ryan suggested that Sanders was provoking violence.
“For Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the presidential spokesperson, the mouthpiece for the president of the United States, to say, ‘You don’t know me,’ in certain quarters in this nation, that starts a physical fight,” she said. “I was very shocked. It was street. I will even go beyond that, it was gutter.”
[April Ryan: Sarah Sanders’ response to Giuliani question was ‘very street’]
On Twitter, former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, offered Ryan a “comeback” to Sanders, to which Ryan replied, “Lol stop. [Baltimore] in the house I know you have my back. That you don’t know me stuff begins fist fights. She needs to know what she is saying. I am not the one.”
CNN did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner on Ryan’s tweets.
Ryan said recently that she receives death threats that appear to be inspired by Trump’s harsh criticisms of the news media.
Asked if she thought it was appropriate to be making comments about potential violence with Sanders, she said she and Rawlings-Blake were only making a “joke” in order to “take the heat off” the confrontation.
“If you really believe an esteemed journalist and a former mayor are going to fight, it’s a sad day,” she told the Washington Examiner.
“On Press Freedom day, [Sanders] said, ‘You don’t know me,'” Ryan continued. “Put it back on Sarah. Don’t bring it to me saying I’m inciting something when she started it on World Press Freedom day. Bottom line. That conversation would have never happened had it not initiated in that [briefing] room, period.”
Asked if she thought Sanders was literally making a threat, Ryan said, “Why did Sarah Sanders come after me and no one else? Why did she say those words to me and no one else? My questions were legitimate. I never made a personal attack.”
Sanders did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
