Will Kayleigh McEnany Outdo Her Predecessor's Legacy by Giving Even One (1) White House Press Conference?

By Rebecca Fishbein | April 8, 2020 | 1:35am

News Politics

Will Kayleigh McEnany Outdo Her Predecessor's Legacy by Giving Even One (1) White House Press Conference?

I have almost forgotten about all the bit players in the White House, and I entirely forgot about Stephanie Grisham, who replaced Sarah Huckabee Sanders as the White House Press Secretary in June. It makes sense that Grisham completely slipped my mind, since she didn’t give a single press briefing the entire time she had the job. Now, we have a new press secretary: Trump campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany. Will she give a single press briefing? Maybe, maybe not, but either way, she sucks. Stay with me.

McEnany didn’t always work for Trump—during and after the 2016 election, she was a regular CNN contributor, and was hired as a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee in 2017. She’s been a Trump mouthpiece the whole time. In fact, McEnany’s been spewing Trump’s bullshit since his Obama birtherism days, relentlessly tweeting birther conspiracies. #TBT:

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There’s also, uh, this!

As a CNN contributor, McEnany could be counted on to spread pro-Trump propaganda. As a GOP head, she did the same, though at least then it was part of her job description. And as the Trump campaign spokesperson, she’s followed the Trump administration to a T, claiming repeatedly that “the press lies,” that impeachment was a witch hunt, etc. More recently, she’s had a huge role in downplaying the threat of the novel coronavirus, which as of Tuesday night has officially killed over 12,000 Americans and sickened hundreds of thousands of them.

Here she is in February telling now-fired Fox News host Trish Regan that thanks to Trump, “[w]e will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.” It ages super well:

Even when the novel coronavirus did make it to the United States—and began ravaging it, as public health experts foretold would happen—McEnany refused to backtrack, claiming the media was downplaying Trump’s (extremely shoddy, and that’s downplaying it) response.

So, now she’s the press secretary, and though the New York Times speculates she won’t be holding any press conferences anytime soon (Trump apparently prefers to be his own press secretary, wonderful), she is absolutely a devoted propagandist. Perhaps she’ll last in the role for longer than a few months, not that I don’t expect to see her on Dancing With the Stars within the year.