White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders ripped the media's coverage of North Korea during the Winter Olympics last month, saying Friday it elevated the regime in a way the Trump administration never has.
Sanders addressed several questions about President Donald Trump's surprising acceptance of a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un over the rogue country's nuclear weapons program. The White House has said the talks are conditional upon North Korea taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
One reporter noted the Kim regime's extensive campaign of starvation and killing, wondering why Trump would want to put the tyrant on the same platform as him with a face-to-face meeting.
"The president wants to make sure that we denuclearize the peninsula, and that we're securing and helping have a safer world," Sanders said. "I'm glad that you guys are acknowledging a lot of the problems of North Korea, because just a couple weeks ago, a lot of members in the press were actually elevating North Korea and some of the members of the regime and comparing them to people in the United States and in this administration."
"I think that is actually what put North Korea on a similar stage," she added. "No action by this administration has even remotely demonstrated a level of rise that the media did during the Olympics and through some of those stories."
Among the stories included a Reuters piece declaring Kim's sister Kim Yo Jong the winner of the "diplomatic gold" at the Winter Olympics, a New York Times piece talking about her "charm" that took the "spotlight," and a CNN piece saying she was "stealing the show." The stories, meanwhile, all whitewashed or downplayed the horrific conditions in North Korea and her role as chief propagandist.