What is Sarah Huckabee Sanders?

She is the former White House Press Secretary to Donald Trump, in office from July 2017 through mid-2019, and the subject of several viral internet moments during her tenure.

Where did Sarah Huckabee Sanders come from?

Before the White House she worked on her father Mike Huckabee's presidential campaigns and joined Trump's 2016 campaign, then became deputy press secretary in January 2017.

What does Sarah Huckabee Sanders mean as a meme?

The name is shorthand for a run of viral controversies, the Pickle letter, the pecan pie stock-photo debate, and the Red Hen refusal, rather than a single image or catchphrase.

How do you use Sarah Huckabee Sanders memes?

People typically screenshot one of her tweets and quote-tweet a joke, or post format parodies like fake kid-handwritten letters in the style of the Pickle note.

Is Sarah Huckabee Sanders still popular as a meme?

The moments are still referenced when related civility debates flare up, but the format is tied to her 2017 to 2018 press secretary years rather than active new remixes.

What was the Pickle letter?

On July 26, 2017, Sanders opened a briefing by reading a letter from a 9-year-old boy nicknamed Pickle and posted it on Twitter, which drew parody replies with fake child-handwritten notes.

What happened with the pecan pie tweet?

On November 23, 2017, Sanders tweeted an overhead photo of a chocolate pecan pie she said she made for Thanksgiving; critics questioned whether it was a stock image.

What was the Red Hen restaurant incident?

On the night of June 22, 2018, the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia asked Sanders to leave because of the administration's policies, and Sanders confirmed the story on Twitter the next morning.

Did President Trump respond to the Red Hen story?

Yes. On June 25, 2018 he tweeted that the Red Hen should focus on cleaning its "filthy canopies, doors and windows" rather than refusing to serve Sanders.

Was the Washington, D.C. Red Hen involved?

No. An unaffiliated D.C. restaurant of the same name publicly clarified that Sanders had gone to the Virginia location, after receiving mistaken negative reviews.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

2017public figure / event-based memeclassic

Published September 26, 2026

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former White House Press Secretary under President Donald Trump, generated a run of internet-famous moments between 2017 and 2018, from a childlike fan letter she read at a press briefing to a chocolate pecan pie Twitter post accused of being a stock photo. The incidents peaked with the Red Hen restaurant refusal in June 2018, which spawned Yelp brigading, presidential tweets, and one of the sharpest civility debates of the Trump era.

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Overview

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not a single meme format so much as a person around whom several distinct viral moments piled up during her tenure as White House Press Secretary from 2017 to 2019. Each moment produced its own remix cycle on Twitter: earnest defenses from supporters, mocking parodies from critics, and long comment threads picking apart the details of whatever she had just posted or said3.

The recurring pattern is that Sanders would share something intended to humanize her or the administration, a child's fan letter, a homemade pie photo, a story about being asked to leave a restaurant, and the internet would immediately treat the post as raw material. Parody accounts wrote fake letters in kid handwriting, food Twitter reverse-image-searched the pie, and Yelp reviewers descended on any business named in a controversy7. The image macros were less about her face than about screenshotting her tweets and dunking on them in quote-tweets.

The Red Hen refusal in June 2018 is the moment most often referenced when people talk about Sanders as a meme subject rather than a political figure. The story rearranged into a debate about civility, business ethics, and the ethics of asking a public official to leave a private establishment, with the president himself weighing in on the restaurant's paint job10.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter (viral spread)

Date

2017

Sanders joined the Trump administration in January 2017 as deputy press secretary under Sean Spicer, and she delivered her first on-camera White House press briefing on May 5, 2017, filling in while Spicer was on Navy Reserve duty1. She was promoted to press secretary that July after Spicer resigned, an announcement made by incoming communications director Anthony Scaramucci during a briefing2.

The first widely mocked meme moment traces to July 26, 2017, when Sanders opened a briefing by reading a letter from a 9-year-old boy nicknamed Pickle, then posted the child's handwritten note on Twitter4. Within hours, parody letters flooded the replies. One of the most circulated came from Twitter user @jimpjorps, who posted a fake kid-scrawl note reading "Release the piss tapes"5. The Pickle letter is what turned Sanders' Twitter account into a target for format-based mockery rather than standard political criticism.

How It Spread

The pecan pie tweet on November 23, 2017, was the next flashpoint. Sanders posted an overhead shot of a chocolate pecan pie with the caption saying she had made it for Thanksgiving at the family farm6. Critics accused her of using a stock photo. New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman publicly asked to see a picture of the pie on a table, and the exchange fed a multi-week reply-guy campaign built around amateur food photography, sunlight angles, and the whiteness of the tabletop3.

The biggest spike came on June 22 and 23, 2018, when Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. An employee posted the news on Facebook, initially writing that the owner "kicked her out along with 7 of her other family members," then walking the language back after the family left voluntarily7. The next morning, Sanders tweeted from her @PressSec account that she had been asked to leave because she works for the president and had "politely left"8. Owner Stephanie Wilkinson gave her account to the Washington Post the same day, saying her staff felt the administration's policies were dangerous and that she asked Sanders to speak on the patio before requesting she leave9.

What followed was a coordinated Yelp brigade in both directions: Trump supporters flooded the Lexington restaurant with one-star reviews while critics posted five-star ones, and an unaffiliated Red Hen in Washington, D.C. had to publicly clarify that Sanders had never been there7. On June 25, President Trump quote-tweeted the controversy to insult the restaurant's cleanliness and paint job10. The Washington Post editorial board ran an op-ed titled "Let the Trump team eat in peace," which prompted Representative Maxine Waters to publicly back the Red Hen owner11.

Timeline

2017-05-05

Sanders delivers her first on-camera White House press briefing, filling in for Sean Spicer[1].

2017-07-21

Sanders is named White House Press Secretary after Sean Spicer's resignation[2].

2017-07-26

Sanders reads and tweets a letter from a 9-year-old boy named Pickle, spawning a wave of parody letters[4].

2017-11-23

Sanders tweets a chocolate pecan pie photo that critics accuse of being a stock image[6].

2018-06-22

Sanders is asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia[7].

2018-06-23

Sanders tweets about the Red Hen incident; owner Stephanie Wilkinson gives her account to the Washington Post[9].

2018-06-25

President Trump tweets an attack on the Red Hen's cleanliness and exterior paint[10].

How to Use This Meme

Sanders memes are almost always reactive rather than template-based. The common convention is to screenshot one of her tweets or briefing statements, quote-tweet it with a joke, or produce a parody in the same visual style (a handwritten child letter, a suspiciously stock-looking food photo). Reverse image searches, side-by-side pie comparisons, and mock kid-handwriting replies are the recurring formats3.