By Danny O’Neil –
Kayleigh McEnany, who looks like she should be hanging on the arm of a PGA golfer sipping a Mimosa, is President Trump’s cudgel for the press.
Behind her beauty lies a fine mind, which the born-again Christian puts to use handling the hostile anti-Trump press. She’s been described as a bulldog with a smile.
As White House press secretary, she regularly chastises a press corps that was cozy with Obama but aggressively antagonistic toward President Trump.
Once a reporter asked if she would take back a statement from her time working at Fox News, that President Trump would prevent Covid-19 from arriving on America’s shores. It was designed to humiliate her, since there was no real answer, but the quick-witted McEnany unloaded with both barrels.
“Does Vox want to take back that they proclaim that the coronavirus would not be a deadly pandemic? Does the Washington Post want to take back that they told Americans to get a grip the flu is bigger than the coronavirus? Does the Washington Post likewise want to take back that our brains are causing us to exaggerate the threat of the coronavirus?”
She rattled off a complete list of media hypocrisy.
“Does the New York Times want to take back that fear of the virus may be spreading faster than the virus itself? Does NPR want to take back that the flu was a much bigger threat than the coronavirus? And finally, once again, the Washington Post? Would they like to take back that the government should not respond aggressively to the coronavirus? I’ll leave you with those questions and maybe you’ll have some answers in a few days.”
Ouch! What a zinger!
The elites who constantly tell Americans what to think were stung. She was the perfect press secretary for Trump, a president who lives up to his self-description as a counter-puncher.
She didn’t get mad. She sweetly smiled. The media giants were aghast with her barbs.
If they were looking forward to chewing up Trump’s fourth press secretary, they found out fast it was going to be Goliath against David.
McEnany thinks God gave her the position.
“I believe God put me in this place for a purpose and for a reason like he does with each and every life,” McEnany told CBN News. “We’re all here for a reason.”
Raised in Tampa Bay, Florida, McEnany found Jesus when she was young. Two days after her 11th birthday, she watched with horror as Rachel Joy Scott was gunned down at Columbine High School because of her faith in Jesus. Asked by the perpetrators of the 1999 massacre if Rachel believed in God, she responded yes and was shot.
“Thank you, Rachel, for making the faith my parents taught me real in my own life,” McEnany tweeted years later. “It has always been my hope that you would greet me one day at Heaven’s pearly gates.”
Her father was a prosperous roofer, and she was a precocious student. She graduated with an international politics degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. before studying at Oxford.
After a 3-year stint producing the Mike Huckabee Show, McEnany started at Miami Law School. She was in the top 1% of the class, so she decided to transfer to Harvard Law School, where she graduated in 2016.
She prepares her presentations like a consummate researcher. After she worked briefly as a commentator for CNN, Van Jones noted, “There’s very few people in either party who can accomplish what Kayleigh has accomplished in such a short time. People keep taking her lightly, and they keep regretting it.”
Almost 32, McEnany was appointed Trump’s press secretary.
The national press is supposed to ask tough questions of politicians and try to filter through any lies or corruption. But since most reporters are progressive, they extend grace to liberal presidents and sharpen their knives whenever there’s a conservative president.
With Trump, the adversarial relationship has reached levels not seen since Richard Nixon was president. In 2018, the Media Research Center found that 92% of news reports about Trump were negative.
Welcome to the hurricane.
To be press secretary is to be a defender of the president. McEnany caught everyone off guard. “McEnany’s mission: Stand by, defend, punch back for Trump,” the Detroit News’ headlined.
When Jerry Nadler and other liberal politicians downplayed the mayhem being perpetrated in Democratic cities after George Floyd’s death, McEnany played video footage of looting and burning at a press conference. (Nadler had said that antifa was a myth perpetrated by conservatives in Washington D.C.)
When CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked “Where does it say protesters are supposed be peaceful?” McEnany responded by pointing out the Constitution of the United States. The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law… prohibiting… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
When facing off with a Clinton advisor on an Anderson Cooper 360 debate, McEnany was evidently riling her by saying that Hillary had allowed a pro-Taliban, anti-gay person to sit behind her in support on a certain occasion. As the Clinton aid stressed that Hillary had disavowed his presence, McEnany popped in: “What attracted the father of Orlando terrorist to your candidate?”
The clearly flustered Clinton aide appeared to stay on the previous question: “He’s a mentally ill individual.
McEnany capitalized. “I get it,” she said.
“Pardon me?” the Clinton aide replied.
“What attracted him to your candidate, that he’s mentally ill,” she quipped.
Only too late did the Clinton aide realize what she said.
Yes, McEnany can be sweetly savage at times, guided by her faith to uphold her values and principled conservatism.
Danny O’Neil studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica.
