Elizabeth Lauten Quits: Jabs At Sasha And Malia Obama Lead To GOP Staffer’s Resignation
Elizabeth Lauten, the Republican aide who lashed out at Sasha and Malia Obama for what she called their lack of “class,” then proceeded to apologize without actually saying “I’m sorry” to the president’s teenage daughters, is quitting her job Monday following outrage over her remarks.
In a post on her now-inaccessible Facebook page Saturday Lauten, an aide to Tennessee Republican Stephen Lee Fincher, blasted Sasha and Malia Obama — who are 13- and 16-years-old, respectively — for displaying a “lack of class” during the annual “Turkey pardoning” ceremony at the White House, a custom that their own father, President Barack Obama, himself seemed to find pointless and absurd.
Lauten also ripped Sasha and Malia for their casual attire worn during the turkey ceremony, saying that the two girls dressed like they were vying for “a spot at the bar.”
Amazingly, Lauten was Fincher’s “communications director.”
GOP Staffer Elizabeth Lauten tells NBC News she is “resigning today” following her comments about Sasha and Malia Obama
— Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) December 1, 2014
After a backlash that extended from the online annals of Twitter to mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post, Lauten then posted an attempted apology on her Facebook page, stating that “after many hours of prayer” she realized that her comments were “hurtful.”
However, even though in her original, harsh comments, she addressed Sasha and Malia Obama directly — in the “apology” Lauten never did the same, and apologized not to the two teenage girls, but only to “those I have hurt and offended.”
Lauten then made the apology primarily about herself, offering her “pledge to learn and grow.”
The apology brought a lecture in manners from Forbes Magazine writer Elisa Doucette.
“First and foremost, to honestly offer an apology, one needs to suck up their ego and political leanings and any other baggage they are carrying. Secondly, an apology needs to acknowledge the person (or people) who really deserves to hear the apology, and address them directly,” Doucette wrote. “Instead of apologizing for a post about Malia and Sasha Obama, Lauten needs to treat them like they are human beings deserving of her compassion and respect, rather than puppets to dance around in political battles.”
Politics may have been the true, underlying motivation in Lauten’s attack on the Obama girls, as indicated by her dig at the parents of Sasha and Malia in her original Facebook post.
“Your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I’m guessing you’re coming up a little short in the ‘good role model’ department,” Lauten wrote.
Republican National Committee Communications Director Sean Spicer also injected a partisan political angle into the response to Lauten’s comments, saying, “in over 20 years in politics I have never seen one of the countless inappropriate comments by Democrats ever covered to a fraction of this.”
But Spicer did not cite any examples of comments by Democrats comparable to the attack on Sasha and Malia Obama, two children, by Elizabeth Lauten, who told NBC News Monday that her resignation from Capitol Hill was “in the works.”
