But those clashes have now become the icebreaker in the speech she gives to Arkansas audiences.
“I’m just excited to have people clap when I come up to a podium,” she said at a Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner in Hot Springs one night last week. “It’s very different from what I’m used to. All I can say is thank God I’m back in Arkansas.”
Ms. Sanders’s relationship with reporters reached a nadir in April after it was revealed that she had admitted under oath to investigators working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that her claim at a press briefing that “countless members of the F.B.I.” told her they had lost confidence in the bureau’s director, James B. Comey, was a “slip of the tongue” that was not based on any facts.
In Hot Springs, the crowd was hardly dwelling on the incident.
“The main thing I like about her is her honesty,” said Carla Shelton, a small-business owner who brought her daughter to hear Ms. Sanders speak. “She got a bad rap because people are offended that she does tell the truth. I’m 100 percent behind her.”
Ms. Sanders arrived at the dinner bearing a “Make America Great Again” cap signed by Vice President Mike Pence, which was auctioned off for $750. She warned of the “chaos” that would ensue if Democrats were allowed to “take guns out of our homes” and force “taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, anytime.”
The crowd swarmed her. Her husband, Brian Sanders, drove her home.
Many of Ms. Sanders’s former White House colleagues have left Mr. Trump’s orbit damaged if not disgraced. But Ms. Sanders appears to be living her best life back home.
After two years in a rented house in Arlington, Va., the Sanders family bought a sprawling $600,000 home in Pleasant Valley, Little Rock’s wealthiest neighborhood. She has just finished building an in-house television studio for her appearances on Fox News, where she is a paid contributor, and works at home when she is not touring the country giving paid speeches and doing some corporate consulting. Her office is decorated with political paraphernalia, including a Woman of the Year award from Virginia Women for Trump and a signed electric guitar from Mr. Huckabee, which credits her with “always rocking for her Daddy!”
Her three children dote on a new puppy named Traveler Hotdog Sanders.
“Life is easier now,” Ms. Sanders is happy to acknowledge.