Sarah Sanders on whether Trump owes Mueller an apology: ‘Are you kidding?’

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that Democrats and the media owe President Trump an apology for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which concluded last week, adding that the president should not apologize to Mueller for repeated criticism.

Sanders, appearing on NBC’s “Today,” was pressed by Savannah Guthrie on whether Trump should apologize to Mueller after Attorney General William Barr reported that the special counsel found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

{mosads}“For the last two years, the president has absolutely eviscerated Bob Mueller, a lifelong public servant, a former Marine, a registered Republican, I might add” Guthrie said to Sanders. “He’s called him a national disgrace, discredited, a prosecutor gone rogue who oversaw a gang of thugs.”

“Did Robert Mueller deserve better from the president than this kind of language and behavior?” she asked.

“Does he [President Trump] owe Robert Mueller an apology?” @savannahguthrie asks @PressSec Sarah Sanders pic.twitter.com/LLQIgdaIf0

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 25, 2019

Sanders responded that she thinks “the American people deserved better” from Mueller, Democrats and the media.

“They didn’t deserve for the election of this president to try to be taken down,” she said.

Guthrie cut in to again press Sanders on Trump’s “rhetoric … about a public servant doing [his] job.”

“Are you kidding?” Sanders responded, saying that Trump’s rhetoric “matches” that of the media and Democrats.

“[They] have called the president an agent of a foreign government,” Sanders added. “That is an accusation equal to treason, which is punishable by death in this country.”

Barr in a letter to two congressional committees on Sunday wrote that the special counsel found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. Though Mueller, according to Barr, said that the report did not exonerate Trump on the question of obstruction of justice, the findings are considered a major win for the president.

Throughout the two years that Mueller was investigating, the president repeatedly blasted the special counsel and his probe, calling the investigation a “witch hunt.”

Guthrie also pushed Sanders on Monday for comparing Trump’s criticism of the investigation to Democrats and members of the media.

“You have kids and you know that if you say, ‘Did you do this?’ The answer isn’t: ‘Yeah, but my brother did that,’” Guthrie said. “[Trump] trashed [Mueller] for two years, and in the end Mueller just did an investigation that ultimately the president considers a total exoneration of him.

“Does he owe Robert mueller an apology for that kind of rhetoric?”

“I think Democrats and the liberal media owe the president and they owe the American people an apology,” Sanders said. “They wasted two years and created a massive disruption and distraction.”