No small wonder, Kayleigh, why so many Republicans believed the Big Lie
(and why Fox News has slotted you to replace Tucker).
Jan. 6, 2021:
Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.” [Boldface added]
Replied [Trump press secretary Kayleigh] McEnany: “Love that. That’s the playbook.”
A brief look back at former Trump press secretary McEnany’s role in promoting the baseless allegation of 2020 voter and election fraud:
Fox News host who joked about Neely protesters set to take turn in Carlson slot
McEnany appeared to evoke racist stereotypes to mock protesters who had recently taken to the streets of New York City to voice their outrage over the May 2 death of Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man, The Independent reported.
According to Deadline, Kayleigh McEnany, a former press secretary and Trump 2020 spokesperson, is doing a trial run this week, beginning Monday.
“I am honored to share that I will be hosting Fox News Tonight on Fox News at 8 p.m. ET all next week (5/8-5/12)! Set your DVR,” McEnany tweeted Thursday afternoon. She asked that followers join her “as we dig into the state of politics, media, culture, and faith in America.”
The Trump Enablers Dance On
. . . the dance of the enablers continues. Pence & Co. cannot seem to give it up. And so we all watch as these aspiring challengers from the upper ranks of Trump’s dysfunctional Administration contort themselves to avoid the unpleasant realities of their complicity in his excesses—while doing everything possible to remain favorably looked upon by his Republican superfans. It is one of the signal dynamics in G.O.P. politics today, though rarely acknowledged as such.
The former Vice-President is, of course, the best example of this phenomenon. He spent four years steering clear of even the slightest hint of disloyalty to the President, only to reluctantly break with him on January 6, 2021, . . . .
Most, like the former Vice-President, take the route of simply avoiding unpleasant facts from the Trump years that do not fit with the story they want to tell. Which pretty much sums up the state of Republican discourse headed into the 2024 election cycle. At least Pence admits that January 6th happened, and that it was wrong.
In the latest example of the genre, Pompeo’s new memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” published this week, manages more or less to skip the catastrophic ending to the Trump Presidency, aside from offhand references to January 6th as “the mayhem at the Capitol” that “the Left wants to exploit for political advantage.”
This is known, in my household, as “pulling a Kayleigh”—a feat of political contortion Peter and I have named in honor of Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump press secretary who managed to publish an entire 2021 memoir, “For Such a Time as This: My Faith Journey Through the White House and Beyond,” that never so much as mentions the insurrection at the Capitol.
(In testimony to the House select committee investigating January 6th, the former White House official Sarah Matthews, McEnany’s deputy, said that McEnany was among several White House officials who urged Trump to call his supporters off their violent rampage but that Trump resisted the idea of including any mention of the word “peace.”)
Pompeo’s memoir mentions none of this, which perhaps should not be a surprise from an official who a Trump adviser once told me was among the most slavish suckups in a White House full of suckups or, as a former Ambassador put it, “a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.” Others emerged from the Trump Administration claiming to have always been worried about his erratic behavior and to have tried to protect the country from it; Pompeo stands out as one who had some of the right instincts behind the scenes but now finds it untenable to publicly admit.
Reading the book was also a reminder to me of yet another reason that Trump may again benefit from this group of former officials who have not had the chutzpah to challenge him: their blinding hatred of one another. Pompeo, while taking much care to avoid offending the former President by admitting publicly all the ways he disagreed with him privately, drips with disdain for many of his former colleagues.
Trump loved this sort of gladiatorial battling among his advisers. It was how he ran his business for decades, how he ran his White House, and what he would do again if given another four years in power. Trump and his imitators, like Pompeo, hurl insults because they think that it makes them look strong. But the truth is that it makes them look very, very small. . . . . These self-styled strongmen are so remarkably weak. ♦
An increasing number of Republicans and now even President Trump’s own Justice Department have undermined the White House’s baseless claims of massive voter fraud. So Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Tuesday night with a defiant message: This evidence is real, it’s from real people, and we’re not backing down.
- Except the appearance only reinforced the true lack of evidence that the Trump team has produced.
- Hannity asked McEnany two questions, and in each case, she responded with a talking point that has been roundly debunked for weeks.
- washingtonpost.com, Dec. 2, 2020
Kayleigh McEnany, on Fox News, deflected a question about the Trump administration sharing intelligence with the Biden transition team. McEnany said that was really a question for the White House, but she couldn’t answer it right now because at that moment, on the air, she was appearing as a member of the Trump campaign.
- Now it should go without saying you can’t be a White House staffer and a campaign adviser at the same time, but in the Trump Administration, that’s where we are.
- It would be funny if it weren’t so destructive. This White House’s antics keep reminding people of the satirical HBO series “Veep.” But they are not a joke. The administration’s chronic lying has divided Americans, degraded their trust in government, and, worst of all, turned facts and evidence into slippery instruments of partisan politics.
- As Trump said in a speech to the VFW in July: “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.” He added, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
- Opinion, Joe Lockhart, former Press Secretary to former President Bill Clinton, edition.cnn.com, Nov. 15, 2020
At the Willard and the White House, the Jan. 6 Panel Widens Its Net
What went on at a five-star hotel near the White House the day before the riot could be a window into how a Trump-directed plot to upend the election ended in violence at the Capitol.
Luke Broadwater and
The latest round of subpoenas reflected the panel’s effort to ascertain the former president’s every move on the day of the riot. It is demanding testimony from Nicholas Luna, one of Mr. Trump’s “body men” who was in the Oval Office as the former president pressured Mr. Pence to refuse to certify the election.
Also summoned was Mr. McEntee, who was reportedly in the Oval Office during a meeting with Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence when Mr. Giuliani suggested seizing Dominion voting machines, and Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House press secretary who was reportedly with Mr. Trump at times as he watched the attack. (boldface added)
Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson, January 13, 2022
It was not just members of street gangs who were involved in overturning the 2020 election. Last week, a new website called Insurrection Index, published by the voting rights organization Public Wise, established that more than 1000 people in elective office or positions of public trust around the country either spread the Big Lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent or participated in the January 6 insurrection.
Over the past several days, news has broken that lawmakers or partisan officials in various states forged documents claiming that Trump won the 2020 election. This links them to the insurrection; as conservative editor Bill Kristol of The Bulwark notes, false electoral counts were part of Trump’s plan to get then–Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count a number of Biden’s electoral votes on the grounds that the states had sent in conflicting ballots.
Interestingly, on December 17, 2021, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that in four states there were an “alternate slate of electors voted upon that Congress will decide in January.”: McEnany talked to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol yesterday.
“If you care about the survival of our republic, we cannot give people power who will not honor elections.”