EXCLUSIVE — Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders 's (R-AR) advice to former President Donald Trump regarding Vice President Kamala Harris is simple.
"Keep doing what we're doing," Sanders told the Washington Examiner. "The Democrat Party's ideas are so broken, and we've seen that over the last 3 1/2 years that they aren't serving the American people."
"I think we continue to stay focused on our message and it'll carry us to a big victory," she said.
In an interview on media row at the Republican National Convention last week in Milwaukee as speculation swirled concerning President Joe Biden and Harris, Sanders downplayed Trump's possible problems with women in this year's election , a matter that was underscored during the convention in which the likes of Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock took center stage.
"We've had a lot of buildup to this moment, with people talking to every demographic, every aspect of the country, over the course of the week," she said.
Sanders, 41, has been Arkansas 's first woman governor since 2023 and is the youngest state executive in office. The mother of three has used her position to advocate other Republican women, speaking at a sideline National Federation of Republican Women luncheon last week as well.
"The Left loves to talk about the war on women, but the only war that I see being waged is from the far Left against the conservative, strong women in this country," she said during the event .
Reflecting on her first 18 months as governor with the Washington Examiner, Sanders credited her father, Mike Huckabee , for setting a good gubernatorial example and for being "somebody, certainly, that I could call on anytime with hard questions." The older Huckabee, who ran for president in 2008 and 2016, was governor for 11 years from 1996 to 2007 and lieutenant governor for another three years before that from 1993 to 1996.
"It took a minute to get settled in like anything new does," she said. "I can't wait to see what we can do over the next six years."
To that end, Sanders dismissed the prospect of returning to Washington for a second Trump administration should he win against Harris, now the 2024 Democratic presumptive presidential nominee after Biden announced last weekend he was stepping down as the party's standard-bearer, in 100-odd days.
"I love what I'm doing," she said. "Glad to be back home in Arkansas, I'm going to do everything I can to help President Trump win in November. And I think him having strong, conservative, Republican governors fighting alongside him, implementing good policy at the state level is really important. And I'm glad that I get to serve in that role."
Her advice for a possible Trump White House press secretary, based on her two years of experience from 2017 to 2019?
"Have fun, enjoy the moment," she said. "It's one of the most amazing opportunities you could ever have, for one of the most incredible public servants there is. So don't forget to slow down and take it all in every once in a while, and have a good time."
Sanders described the Republican Party as "Donald Trump's party, certainly since he first came down the [Trump Tower] escalators in 2016." But she sidestepped the question as to whether his picking Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his vice presidential nominee has promoted the former lawyer and investment banker as his heir apparent, with speculation she, herself, has presidential aspirations. Her convention address delivered one of the punchier performances of the Tuesday night, criticizing first lady Jill Biden in a line written by her father .
"I certainly don't think that the MAGA movement is going anywhere," Sanders said. "Donald Trump has created something that I think will far outlast any time that he holds office because you see people coalescing not just around a person, which they certainly have, but around what he has talked about, and people will now demand that from our party leadership."
"I think J.D. Vance will be a great complement to the president," she added. "He has a powerful story, which we got to hear [at the convention], and I think he's going to do a really great job connecting with Americans, particularly in the Rust Belt, and really fighting for the American worker, something that's going to be really important for the November election."
With Trump's assassination attempt serving as a reminder that politicians are people, too, Sanders shared that her own brush with mortality, a thyroid cancer diagnosis, was behind her.
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"Doing great, feeling well, almost exactly two years to be totally cancer-free and feel awesome and glad to have my energy back and, you know, out on the trail and trying to keep up with my three kids," she said.
Nationally, Trump has an average 2-point edge on Harris in early polling conducted this month since Trump's debate in June against Biden, according to Real Clear Politics .
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