President Donald Trump surprised virtually no one on Wednesday when he made the Roseanne Barr controversy about himself, tweeting his complaint that Disney CEO Bob Iger apologized to Valerie Jarrett for Barr's racist tweets — but failed to express a similar sense of remorse about jokes made about the president on Disney-owned networks. Now the White House has produced a laundry list of things that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders argued on Wednesday warrant an apology from Iger.
“Where was Bob Iger’s apology to the White House staff for Jemele Hill calling the president, and anyone associated with him, a white supremacist?” Sanders asked. “To Christians around the world for Joy Behar calling Christianity a mental illness?”
She continued: “Where was the apology for Kathy Griffin going on a profane rant against the president on ‘The View’ after a photo showed her holding president Trump’s decapitated head? And where was the apology from Bob Iger for ESPN hiring Keith Olbermann after his numerous expletive-laced tweets attacking the president as a Nazi?”
Sanders' response came during Wednesday's press briefing after she was asked why Trump's tweet hit Iger but didn't address Roseanne's tweet, which led to the cancellation of her hit ABC sitcom “Roseanne.”
In a tweet early Wednesday, the president acknowledged that Iger apologized to Jarrett, a top advisor to former President Barack Obama, after Barr called her a combination of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Planet of the Apes.” However, Trump did not address the substance of what Barr tweeted or ABC’s decision to pull the plug on “Roseanne.” Instead, he noted that Iger never called him “to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC.”
"The president's simply calling out the media bias," Sanders explained. "No one's defending what she said."
On Tuesday, however, Sanders sidestepped questions from reporters during an Air Force One gaggle when asked about the president's opinion on the Roseanne controversy. She said the president has been "extremely focused" on the upcoming summit with North Korea and other matters, not Roseanne’s controversy.
"As you know the president has been extremely focused,” Sanders said. "Things going on with the upcoming summit, the president is focused on North Korea, he's focused on trade deals, he's focused on rebuilding our military our economy, that’s what he’s focused on, and not other things."
In the past, Trump has blasted programs on the network, including the hit sitcom "Black-ish" and has argued with the hosts of "The View" and late night host Jimmy Kimmel. "How is ABC Television allowed to have a show entitled 'Blackish'? Can you imagine the furor of a show, "Whiteish"! Racism at highest level?" he tweeted in 2014.
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