Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to Vice President Harris, put her reputation and her life on the line trying to propel then-candidate Joe Biden into the White House, so the least he could’ve done was throw her the White House press secretary job. But that job ended up going to a white woman, Jen Psaki, with no affiliation to the Dora Milaje, which Sanders has been a member of since birth.
Don’t believe me, watch as Sanders takes down a protester who may have harmed Biden’s fragile ego with an anti-dairy protest sign.
Lactose intolerant indeed.
Sanders noted in a recent Washington Post feature on her and her fiancé, D.C.’s director of culture and nightlife, Shawn Townsend, that she was “hurt” to learn that she’d been passed over for the job.
“That one stung her,” Bakari Sellers, a mutual friend of Townsend and Sanders told the Post.
Sellers added that Sanders “spent a lot of capital” in that job, noting that the Biden campaign would come to her when they “had a problem with the Black community.”
Never forget that it was Sanders who came to Biden’s aid when he ran out here butt-naked and claimed that if any of Charlamagne Tha God’s listeners had a “problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”
“These moments were not few and far between,” Sellers said. “They would send Symone out to take those bullets. . . . And then to be passed over, that hurt.”
Sanders wanted the job and had she gotten it, she would’ve become the first Black woman to hold the job, the Post noted.
Sellers added that Sanders was stung to learn that Biden had gone with Psaki, the former Obama communications director, for the press secretary job.
Townsend echoed Sellers’s sentiment, telling the Post, “She was definitely hopeful that she would have that opportunity.”
Sanders’ name has of course come up when Psaki broke the news that she would be leaving the role next year.
“I think it’s going to be time for somebody else to have this job, in a year from now or about a year from now,” she told David Axelrod on his CNN podcast, The Axe Files.
But Sanders isn’t looking to take the job that passed her by, telling the Post “back then they didn’t want me, but now I’m hot and they all on me.” she was “happy where I am and with what I’m doing,” adding, “And it’s keeping me very very busy!”
And it means something that when Biden didn’t recognize her worth, Kamala Harris did. Sanders noted that she was “incredibly grateful” when she got the call to join Harris’ staff, adding that she was “in tears.”