White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took some heated questions at the White House press briefing on Wednesday, but the toughest might have been from American Urban Radio Networks’ April Ryan.
“Does this administration believe, does this president believe slavery was wrong?” asked Ryan.
The question met with a swift rebuke from Sanders, who called the implication “disgusting and absurd.”
“I think it is disgusting and absurd to suggest that anyone inside of this building would support slavery,” she said.
Ryan’s question was likely related to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s recent interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in which he seemed to defend Robert E. Lee and said that the Civil War was a result of a failure to compromise.
“Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country,” Kelly said Monday in an interview on the debut edition of Laura Ingraham’s new Fox News show, “The Ingraham Angle.”
“The lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand,” he added.