Gov. Sarah Sanders tries on her post-Trump politics on ‘The View’

It’s not a good time to be a Trump Republican or to have a book coming out called “Unapologetic: Clarity and Conviction in a World Gone Crazy.” 

Republicans are the crazy ones now, backers of genocide in Gaza, a gas-price-hiking war with Iran and immigration policies so cruel they’d make Joseph Goebbels blush. That brand of crazy cost them the midterms. 

Nevertheless, the show must go on. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders dashed up to the ABC studios in New York to appear on Monday’s episode of “The View,” stumping for her new book and testing out some new material for her 2028 bid for national office. She also tried on a new look, trading in her infantile babydoll dresses for a take-me-seriously dark-plum sheath dress. 

Trump may seem like persona non grata to anyone who watched election results in the rest of the country, but Arkansas’ governor remains a true believer, her muscle memory from her time as Trump’s press secretary fully intact. Can she position herself as the future of the post-Trump Republican Party by leveraging the fact that Arkansas bucked the blue wave on Election Day?

Sanders told the hosts of “The View” that she was able to reclaim her throne as governor by focusing on bread-and-butter issues like cutting taxes, growing the economy and raising student test scores. “Republicans did really well [in Arkansas] on the things that really impact people’s lives day to day,” she lied. (It’s important to note that while Sanders did claim another victory, the margin was significantly smaller than it was when she came into office in 2022.) 

Sanders did not mention that she’s more Trump than Trump, having spent the past three years in office shoving racist anti-DEI policies on the state, sending the Arkansas National Guard to Washington, D.C., inviting ICE agents to work with local law enforcement, and endangering women’s lives with one of the country’s most extreme abortion bans. 

She did not mention that she’s extraordinarily unpopular in her home state on both sides of the aisle for shoving a prison — and data centers — onto voters. Nor did Sanders acknowledge that test score gains that followed her 2023 Arkansas LEARNS Act are based on an evaluation system created by the governor and her handpicked education officials, and thus has no clear baseline.  

She stayed mum about her transphobic campaign ads depicting a cisgender man trying out for a women’s sports team — and her Brad “welfare queen” ad that boasted about her policy of forcing folks on Medicaid to meet red-tape-heavy work requirements before qualifying for benefits in a state with horrific health care gaps. 

Arkansas Republicans are not, in fact, sitting so pretty. Democrat Hallie Shoffner, a first-time political candidate, closed a significant gap against incumbent Sen. Tom Cotton, who won using a $15 million ad campaign focused on vile anti-immigration rhetoric. Democrat Chris Jones was narrowly denied French Hill‘s House seat, arguably due to racial gerrymandering. The Democrats flipped 11 seats in the state Legislature.  

“The View” co-host Ana Navarro pushed Sanders on immigration, both noting Sanders’ affinity for Stephen Miller and recognizing that Arkansas’ own immigrant workforce is critical to state industries in poultry and food processing. “How do you reconcile elevating Stephen Miller, the architect of some of the most draconian immigration policies?” Navarro asked her.  

Sanders, baring her teeth for a second, said that Trump was right to focus on violent “illegals” and securing the border, rehashing a story about a Honduran immigrant who killed a white Arkansas woman, Jennifer Ann Morton, in a drunk-driving incident in 2024. Host Sunny Hostin shot back that human beings aren’t illegals. 

From there, Sanders did a head-spinning about-face on immigration, working on a freshly hewn wedge she’s crafting between herself and Trump. She stated that our immigration system needs to be reformed by — get this — shortening wait times to legal migration. “We’ve made it a 10- to 12-year process for somebody to come through our system. It shouldn’t be that way. We have to fix the system.” This kinder, gentler stance was unthinkable prior to last Tuesday’s blue tsunami. 

We also got a little teaser of the contents of Sanders’ book. We know it tells personal stories about surviving cancer and a car crash and delves deep into her identity as a religious zealot (our words).

“The whole goal and the purpose of the book is that I’m unapologetic in my faith, and I think that so often people misunderstand how faith works,” she said, adding that, “My greatest identity, the only true peace and fulfillment that I have and will ever get, is my identity in Christ.” 

Anyone who knows Sanders’ father and former governor Mike Huckabee should be very afraid of Sanders’ metaphysical tendency to use her faith to justify heinous cruelty. Huckabee has justified the genocide in Gaza on the grounds that Israel was promised to the Jewish people by God.

Arkansas Democrats can breathe easier knowing that they flipped 11 seats in the state Legislature and that the rest of the country carried us to victory last week, but let’s not rest on our laurels. Arkansans know what kind of person Gov. Sanders truly is; the rest of the country really doesn’t. 

After a lifetime in the limelight and over a decade as a Trump acolyte, Sanders has a self-possessed Trumpian disdain for any critic and a wily ability to think on her feet. Sanders is quick to remind people that her best friend is Jesus, not Donald Trump. Monday’s appearance showed she’s good at pivoting and eager to paint herself as a sensible Christian moderate — and even distance herself just a smidge from the president — if that’s what it takes to get her to the White House.