Kayleigh McEnany: Press Secretary Number Four

[HerNameIsBuffy]

8 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

Is she a real live human whom was hired by Trump, or did he create her in his laboratory?  She's just custom made for his kind of evil.

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm shaking my head so hard that my dog jumped off the couch to check on me:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Trump’s ignorance is total — and you can quote his press secretary on that"

Spoiler

If things weren’t already bad enough for President Trump — economic collapse, botched pandemic response, mass unrest — U.S. intelligence believes Trump’s “friend” Vladimir Putin paid Taliban fighters bounties to kill U.S. troops.

But the White House is ready with a defense: The president has no earthly idea what’s going on.

Totally in the dark.

Not a clue!

“The CIA director, NSA, national security adviser, and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany declared at Monday afternoon’s briefing.

So, asked NBC’s Kristen Welker, Trump was kept “out of the loop by his own intelligence community?”

“It would not be elevated to the president until it was verified,” the press secretary explained.

Shouldn’t the president have been told about such a serious matter?

“There are dissenting opinions,” McEnany ventured.

Reporters pointed out that intelligence, by definition, is generally unverified, and that the bounty intelligence was solid enough that U.S. officials shared it with the British.

McEnany indicated Trump’s advisers didn’t find it “necessary” to brief him.

But “given these reports,” asked Jeff Mason of Reuters, “does the president have a specific message for Moscow?”

“No,” McEnany said, “because he has not been briefed.”

In fact, McEnany suggested, Trump still hadn’t been briefed on the Russian bounties by Monday afternoon, even though administration officials were, at that hour, briefing lawmakers.

Previous presidents have claimed not to have been briefed about things they shouldn’t have known about, as when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush claimed he was “out of the loop” on the Iran-contra affair during the 1980s. But this is quite unusual: The White House insisting the president was out of the loop on something he should have known about. It’s as though Trump’s ignorance is a point of pride.

The out-to-lunch excuse has been getting more use as thing get worse for Trump. On Sunday, Trump shared a video in which a man chanting “white power” (Trump’s tweet thanked the “great people” in the video) and deleted it only after an outcry that included Republicans. McEnany claimed Trump “did not hear that particular phrase” when he watched the video.

By Trump’s own account, he was kept in the dark by China on the coronavirus. He was oblivious to the significance of Juneteenth or of Tulsa when he scheduled a campaign rally on that day in that city. And John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser says Trump was unaware of many things, including Britain’s status as a nuclear power.

Ignorance may be the only bliss for Trump as his presidency dissolves into failures. As other countries keep the coronavirus in check, states that followed Trump’s encouragement to reopen early — Florida, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina — are seeing record levels of infections. His allies are calling for a campaign shakeup as polls show the unpopular president trailing Democrat Joe Biden by nearly 10 points.

His rally in Tulsa was a debacle. His dalliances with white supremacists (McEnany declined Monday to disavow the display of Confederate battle flags at Trump rallies) has galvanized the opposition. Bolton revealed that Trump sought reelection help from China. And now, Russians have apparently put bounties on the heads of U.S. troops.

McEnany opened her briefing with a statement decrying “anarchy in our streets,” “chaos,” “shootings,” “rioting,” “domestic terrorism” and “rampant destruction.” Standing against anarchy, she said, “is President Trump’s vision for the future.”

That’s quite a reelection pitch.

But, in one sense, McEnany has a point about anarchy: When it comes to the nation’s troubles, our head of state is MIA.

Trump’s own secretary of health and human services is saying the “window is closing” to get control of the situation — but Trump’s spokeswoman says that “we’re encouraged to see that fatalities are coming down” and that mask wearing should be a “personal choice.”

Okay, so Trump isn’t going to act to stop the virus’s resurgence. How about action to stop Russia from paying for the killing of U.S. troops?

“The president is briefed on verified intelligence,” McEnany said.

“If he hasn’t been briefed,” the Dallas Morning News’s Todd Gillman asked, “how is he certain that Russia didn’t put out these bounties?”

The press secretary replied by condemning the “absolutely irresponsible decision of the New York Times to falsely report that he was briefed on something that he in fact was not briefed on.”

How dare the Times report that Trump was informed! Get it right: This president’s ignorance is total — and you can quote the White House press secretary on that.

 

[Cartmann99]

19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm shaking my head so hard that my dog jumped off the couch to check on me:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

Which, of course, led to this:

 

[WiseGirl]

Following @GreyhoundFan's post above it also led to this.

 

[Cartmann99]

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Which, of course, led to this:

 

I've had this bit playing in my head for a couple of days now:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The political theater of Kayleigh McEnany’s scripted walk-offs"

Spoiler

Kayleigh McEnany’s press briefings don’t just draw to a close. They tend to end with a flourish — a true walk-off moment.

It happened again at the White House on Monday. President Trump’s press secretary was speaking to reporters when one asked about his denial of reports that Russian operatives offered bounties to Taliban members who kill American troops in Afghanistan. But, a reporter noted, Trump had also claimed that he had never been briefed on the subject — so how could he be certain there were never any bounties?

McEnany was ready for this one.

Quickly flipping pages in her briefing binder, McEnany launched into an extended critique of the New York Times, which broke the Russia story last week. Reading from her notes, she rattled off a series of alleged errors published by the Times in its reporting about Russia over the past four years, including a claim that 17 intelligence agencies had agreed about Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Only four agencies had done so.)

Then she unleashed the uppercut punch: “It is inexcusable, the failed Russia reporting of the New York Times. And I think it’s time that the New York Times, and also The Washington Post, hand back their Pulitzers.”

Bam!

And with that, McEnany snapped her binder shut and strode out of the briefing room, trailed by the unanswered shouts and murmurs of the White House press corps.

Such dramatic exits have become a signature of McEnany’s brief tenure as press secretary. Since taking the job in April, the former Trump-friendly CNN pundit and spokeswoman for Trump’s reelection campaign has often waited until the briefing’s conclusion — that is, the moment when she determines the briefing is concluded — to unload on the assembled reporters.

The excoriation is typically punctuated by a binder slam and a determined stride away from the lectern, almost like the slugger who doesn’t bother to watch the pitch he just swatted as it sails into the bleacher seats. The unspoken message seems to be: Take that, hacks!

McEnany, for example, concluded her briefing on June 1 by playing a White House-produced video of police embracing protesters, images that she said “have not been played all that often” in the news media.

And when she was asked in early May if she wanted to take back her assertion in a Fox Business Network interview in February that “we will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here,” McEnany responded by rhetorically asking if news organizations would like to take back articles that had downplayed the threat. After rattling off several of them, she delivered her exit line: “I’ll leave you with those questions and maybe you’ll have some answers in a few days.”

During another very special McEnany moment in May, the press secretary closed things out by narrating an illustrated PowerPoint presentation of five questions she said reporters should pose to Obama administration officials in support of Trump’s claims of a conspiracy against him.

“If I write them out in a slide format — maybe we’re visual learners and you guys will follow up with journalistic curiosity,” she said sarcastically in introducing her lecture. Sounding like a teacher handing out an assignment, she concluded: “It’s a long weekend. You guys have three days to follow up on those questions. And I certainly hope the next time I ask, some hands go up, because Obama’s spokesperson should be asked those questions because President Trump’s spokespeople certainly would be.”

And . . . scene.

The would-be smackdowns seemed so orchestrated that all it lacked in stagecraft was the kind of musical punctuation that “CSI: Miami” used to punch up Detective Horatio Caine’s bon mots before jumping to the opening credits and theme song, the Who’s “Who Are You?”

As a practical matter, McEnany’s abrupt exits have the advantage of foreclosing upon follow-up questions or comments. They give her, in effect, the last word. They’re also in keeping with her boss’s perpetual denunciations of the media as “fake news.”

McEnany didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Her mic-dropping moments are really designed for two audiences beyond the denizens of the briefing room: Trump himself and the universe of Trump-friendly websites, said Ryan Lizza, Politico’s chief Washington correspondent and a CNN contributor. The websites, he said, turn her set pieces into share-worthy clips “for the MAGA-sphere” within minutes of her walkout.

“We used to have this quaint idea that the press secretary wasn’t just a mouthpiece for the president, that half of the job was serving the press and the public,” said Lizza, who appeared with McEnany on CNN many times when she was a network contributor. “That model is gone now. Now it’s almost pure theater, and [she’s serving] the negative partisanship that drives all else.”

Social scientists study the way in which people end interactions with others, known as “leave-taking behavior,” and McEnany’s behavior fits into this analytical framework, said Jennifer Mercieca, an associate professor at Texas A&M who specializes in rhetoric and public affairs.

In friendly or cordial relationships, she said, a person typically will begin to position themselves toward an exit and announce their intention to depart. They’ll reaffirm the relationship by summarizing what’s been said and suggest, if only in vague terms, a future meeting.

The failure to do these things sends the opposite message about a relationship — that one party has disrespect for the other.

McEnany’s scripted walk-offs point to “how adversarial the relationship between the press secretary and the press is at present,” said Mercieca. “The abrupt ending signals a lack of respect for the press, especially after she has berated their reporting.”

 

[Botkinetti]

I have just amused myself by thinking that a reporter should ask when Kayleigh plans to stalk off because they would like to plan the rest of the day. Either that or all the reporters should bring binders and after one of her answers should all slam them closed and get up and leave as a group. 

I know it would be seen as unprofessional and feed into the narrative of fake news but I would still like to watch her face if it happened.

[GreyhoundFan]

She says this shit with a straight face:

 

[Audrey2]

3 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

She says this shit with a straight face:

 

Oh, Kayleigh, you had better hope that Trump is done as of January 20. If you continue as press secretary much longer, you will look like Kellyanne Conway from tap dancing around the truth and whitewashing lies.

[GreyhoundFan]

"McEnany defends Trump’s view on Confederate flag by claiming he doesn’t have one"

Spoiler

After multiple attempts to explain why President Trump appeared to defend the Confederate flag while attacking the only top black driver in NASCAR on Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany settled on arguing that Trump was speaking only in the abstract.

“The president has made clear he was not taking a position one way or the other in that tweet,” McEnany said Monday when asked for an unequivocal stance on the Confederate flag.

As institutions across the country, from NASCAR to the state of Mississippi, take steps to remove Confederate imagery and other symbols of racism from the public square, Trump and his White House allies are struggling to mount a defense of increasingly antiquated views. Their latest argument is that Trump — who has expressed views on topics from “Saturday Night Live” to horse racing controversies to the weekend lineup at Fox News — is opinion-less about the Civil War’s most controversial symbol.

Trump made the contrast all the more stark with a Monday morning pro-Confederacy tweet, which became the latest example of his willingness to push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination as part of his reelection pitch.

The president said on Twitter that NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace should apologize to those who stood beside him after his racing team discovered a noose in his garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway on June 21; Trump described the incident as a “hoax.”

He went on to write that the incident, along with NASCAR’s ban on the Confederate flag, has harmed the sport’s ratings.

“That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!” Trump wrote.

A Fox Sports executive later tweeted that NASCAR ratings are up on the network.

McEnany, who joined the White House from Trump’s campaign in April, has found herself repeatedly defending the president’s racially offensive outbursts.

She has vacillated between trying to recraft or obfuscate Trump’s statements and arguing that they mean something completely different from how they are widely interpreted. In her short term as press secretary, she has spoken in favor of Confederate monuments, military bases named after Confederate generals and Trump supporters in a video in which one man twice shouts “white power.”

On Monday, facing a barrage of questions about Trump’s flag tweet, McEnany’s thick briefing book offered little of substance to defend the president’s latest foray into America’s racial divide.

“I spoke to him this morning on this, and he said that he was not making a judgment on this one way or the other,” she replied when asked why Trump was appearing to support the Confederate flag.

As reporters came back to the topic — and pressed McEnany on her claim that the president was taking a position of neutrality on the flag — she tried a few different approaches.

Asked if Trump thought it was a mistake for NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag, McEnany reiterated that he had not taken a position and criticized a journalist for “focusing on one word at the very bottom of a tweet.”

She later attempted, multiple times, to contextualize the tweet by saying that “in aggregate” it was an attempt to defend NASCAR fans from “knee-jerk” claims that they are racist.

“The president was noting the fact that in aggregate this notion that NASCAR men and women who have gone and who are being demeaned and called racist and being accused in some venues of committing a hate crime against an individual — those allegations are just dead wrong,” she said, without explaining whom she was accusing of making such a broad attack on NASCAR fans.

She made a few other attempts to explain the tweet, each time sidestepping the central issue of whether the president supports the Confederate flag.

“The whole point of the tweet is to note the incident, the alleged hate crime that in fact was not a hate crime,” she said. “At the very end, the ban on the flag was mentioned in the broader context of the fact that he rejects this notion that somehow NASCAR men and women who go to these events are racist.”

McEnany’s tortured defense of Trump’s tweet stood out Monday in part because she was one of the few voices attempting to support the president’s views on the Confederate flag — even as she claimed he didn’t have any.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, said Monday that Wallace had no reason to apologize and that NASCAR had made the right business decision.

“I’ve lived in South Carolina all my life, and if you’re in business, the Confederate flag is not a good way to grow your business,” he said on Fox News Radio.

McEnany also was unable to explain what Trump wanted Wallace to apologize for. Wallace never saw the noose, and it was a member of his team who reported it to NASCAR officials.

After investigating, the FBI announced June 23 that no hate crime had been committed against the black driver because the rope, which had been tied into a noose and used as a garage door pull, had been in that particular garage since October, when NASCAR previously raced at Talladega.

Asked what Wallace should apologize for, McEnany said: “Well, look, the FBI, as I noted, concluded that this is not a hate crime, and he believes it would go a long way if Bubba came out and acknowledged that as well. This was not a hate crime, as noted by the FBI.”

Wallace said in a Twitter statement Monday that he was choosing “love over hate” and added a direct reference to Trump.

“Always deal with the hate being thrown at you with LOVE! Love over hate every day,” he wrote. “Love should come naturally as people are TAUGHT to hate. Even when it’s HATE from the POTUS.”

NASCAR also released a statement Monday, expressing its support for Wallace and its opposition to racism.

The turn of events further highlighted Trump’s increasingly isolated stance as he leans into the politics of racial grievance and defense of the Confederacy.

McEnany has emerged as one of the president’s most avid defenders as he has gone further.

After Trump retweeted the video of one of his supporters shouting “white power” in an overwhelmingly white Florida retirement community last week, McEnany said Trump didn’t hear the phrase. After he deleted the video but did not condemn the language used, McEnany pointed to the deletion while also defending the Trump supporters in the video.

“His point in tweeting out that video was to stand with his supporters, who are oftentimes demonized,” McEnany said on Fox News last week.

She has defended Trump’s threat to veto any bill renaming bases honoring Confederate generals by saying it would be an insult to U.S. troops who trained at these facilities before heading out to war — even though the generals in question fought against the United States.

McEnany ended her briefing Monday by focusing on black victims of crime, lambasting reporters for asking about Trump’s Confederate flag tweets rather than about incidents of violence in several cities over the weekend.

As she walked away, reporters shouted that the president’s Twitter feed — and her lack of direct answers about his views on the Confederate flag — was part of the reason the issue dominated the briefing.

Minutes later, Trump tweeted his opinion about sports teams that are considering changing mascots viewed as offensive. Again, he took a position that McEnany may find herself trying to defend with little support.

“They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct,” Trump wrote. “Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very angry right now!”

 

[Botkinetti]

Maybe after Kayleigh is no longer employed by trump she should become a writer. She can spin her bullshit however she likes and be considered creative rather than a lying liar who lies.

[fraurosena]

How original.

 

[fraurosena]

Good grief.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"It’s the duty of the White House press secretary to hold briefings. But not like this."

Spoiler

Jonathan Karl, the author of “Front Row at the Trump Show,” covers the White House for ABC News and is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

On the Monday following President Trump’s Independence Day weekend speeches, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany opened her briefing as she often does: by reprimanding “the media” for mischaracterizing the president’s words.

“This vision is not a culture war, as the media seeks to falsely proclaim,” McEnany said. The very next day, in an interview with RealClearPolitics, the president said: “We are in a culture war.”

Such head-spinning contradictions are routine at Trump White House briefings, where the press secretary often admonishes reporters for asking about the president’s exact words.

At one recent briefing, reporters asked McEnany to explain a presidential tweet, sent a few hours earlier, maligning NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace — the circuit’s only full-time black driver — suggesting he had perpetrated a “HOAX” and calling on him to apologize.

Although the president had written “That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!” McEnany denied that the president had criticized NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate flag at its events. (For the record, Trump was wrong, and NASCAR’s ratings rose after its ban.)

I decided to follow up.

“What is the president’s position?” I asked. “Does he think NASCAR made a mistake by banning the Confederate flag?”

None of the words she said in reply answered my question. So I tried again.

“But what is his position on it?”

McEnany could have said that the tweet speaks for itself. Instead, she attacked the question.

“You’re focusing on one word at the very bottom of a tweet that’s completely taken out of context,” she said.

A few things are important here: The issue wasn’t one word, and it wasn’t taken out of context. The White House press secretary was denying the president’s own words and failing to answer legitimate questions about something he had done hours earlier. The denial of reality was frustrating, but McEnany’s silence was illuminating, as it suggested that the president’s position is so politically toxic that his spokesperson thinks she shouldn’t defend or even acknowledge it.

But the most troubling moment that day came as McEnany ended the briefing.

“You know,” she said, “I was asked probably 12 questions about the Confederate flag. This president is focused on action, and I’m a little dismayed that I didn’t receive one question on the deaths that we got in this country this weekend. I didn’t receive one question about New York City shootings doubling for the third straight week.”

This statement seemed to suggest that reporters don’t care about people getting killed. But, really, it was an attempt to mislead people about the purpose of a White House briefing. Rising crime rates are an important issue, but the administration wasn’t offering any new policy to address it; the press secretary is there to answer questions about the actions of the president and his administration.

As a reporter and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, I have often advocated a return of regular briefings by the White House press secretary, which lapsed in early 2018. The merits of the briefings over the years can be debated, but I think the White House spokesperson has an obligation to regularly answer questions about the policies and pronouncements of the executive branch.

The White House press secretary’s job differs fundamentally from that of a spokesperson for a candidate or political party. The White House press secretary serves at the pleasure of a president but is also a public servant whose salary is paid by taxpayers. The job is to inform the public: to be an intermediary between the president and a press corps the public relies on for information. As former White House press secretary Mike McCurry has pointed out, this intermediary role is embedded in the layout of the West Wing; the press secretary’s office is midway between the Oval Office and the briefing room.

Denying reality and using the White House podium for purely political purposes is a violation of public trust.

Briefings under the current press secretary rarely last 30 minutes — which is short by traditional standards — but routinely include opening and closing messages that more closely resemble the monologues of a partisan political talk show than a public official’s briefing.

Recently, McEnany stepped to the microphone and declared, “I am pleased to inform everyone that Seattle has been liberated.” She called the so-called autonomous zone of about six city blocks that had been occupied by protesters “a failed four-week Democrat experiment by the radical left” and implied that “liberation” was credited to her boss: “President Trump set the tone: Law and order must prevail to preserve peace in our streets.”

Seattle’s Democratic mayor ordered the removal of protesters, and its police chief oversaw the police action. The federal government was not involved. But like so much else, this opening monologue wasn’t about briefing the media; it was about making a political point.

I still believe it is the duty of a White House press secretary to regularly hold briefings — but not like this.

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[fraurosena]

McEnany unwittingly spoke the truth for once.

His response has been historic. Historically bad, that is.

Edited July 16, 2020 by fraurosena

[GreyhoundFan]

She is a piece of work:

 

[WiseGirl]

What the ever loving fuck? I can't. 

 

[Cartmann99]

If someone ever steals her book, she'll stand up there and blink for a minute before she runs away.

 

[Becky]

13 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

What the ever loving fuck? I can't. 

 

We can’t let science get in the way! Science bad! Facts bad! Pay no attention to actual facts and science! Just pretend nothing is wrong, send the kiddies off on the school bus, admire yourself in the glow of an incandescent bulb, and flush your toilet while thinking of Dear Leader! 

Jesus Christ, how did we get to this pathetic point where that is even remotely an acceptable attitude to think, much less be the official stated White House position? 

[GreyhoundFan]

LOL -- I love when anyone claps back at Kayleigh.

[GreyhoundFan]

She actually has a bigger tell...if her mouth is open, she's lying:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love the Borowitz Report: