Kayleigh McEnany is really still out here pushing election lies

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Fox News Monday night to peddle long-debunked election lies — a mere day after insisting on Twitter that she’s not a liar.

Among other things, McEnany falsely claimed that President-elect Joe Biden outperformed former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in only four major metro areas during the 2020 election, suggesting that this somehow proved there had been massive election fraud.

“This [voter fraud] happened in the places that needed to happen, which is why the four metros — the only four — where Joe Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton were Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Detroit,” McEnany said.

That claim is demonstrably false. Critics were swift to note that it had even been debunked by conservative outlets.

According to the right-leaning National Review in November, Biden’s margin of victory surpassed Hillary Clinton’s in at least 31 urban counties.

Contrary to McEnany’s claims, Philadelphia was among the metro areas where Biden’s performance did not improve, according to that report.

The National Review also noted that Biden’s gains in Detroit and Milwaukee were in fact “distinctly subpar” — and that even Donald Trump substantially improved upon his 2016 margin of victory in Detroit.

McEnany has a long history of pushing disinformation — serving as an unofficial campaign spokesperson while also working as press secretary, a contradictory role that’s been scrutinized by experts as a possible Hatch Act violation — even beyond the 2020 election, which Trump still insists he won.

Upon taking over the role of press secretary, she had one promise for the American people.

“I will never lie to you,” McEnany told reporters at her first press conference on May 1. “You have my word on that.”

She then proceeded to violate that promise — not only in that same speech, but also on dozens of other occasions in the subsequent months.

After leaked tapes revealed that Trump had indeed lied to the American people about the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of the pandemic, despite having knowledge to the contrary, McEnany insisted he had done nothing wrong.

“The president has never lied to the American public on COVID,” she said in September.

McEnany has also pushed false claims of voter fraud on the airwaves, falsely claiming Trump won Pennsylvania when he didn’t.

In mid-December, long after Trump lost the election, she suggested there still might be a “continuation of power” involving Trump remaining in office.

“[Trump] won’t get ahead of that activity actually happening, but he has taken all statutory requirements necessary to either ensure a smooth transition or a continuation of power,” she said in a briefing.

McEnany has also lied about former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama blocking an orderly transfer of power — when Trump quite literally thanked them for ensuring one, in his inauguration speech.

She’s made other easily debunked claims as well, falsely claiming Trump was the first president to celebrate World Aids Day and that the Trump administration has an all-female communications team.

Notoriously conservative Fox News even cut off a post-election press conference by McEnany in November, noting that she didn’t have any evidence to support her claims of a stolen election.

“Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this,” said anchor Neil Cavuto.

McEnany’s latest false claim comes just one day after she took to Twitter to blast CNN’s Jake Tapper for saying Sunday that he won’t interview her because she lies “like most people breathe”.

“There are some people that are so mendacious, I just wouldn’t put them on air. Kayleigh McEnany, I never booked her,” Tapper said. “Jason Miller from the Trump campaign, I would never book him. These are just people who tell lies the way that most people breathe. There was no value in that.”

McEnany fired back the next day.

“This is a therapy session for a broken network, and @jaketapper is lazy enough to participate by lobbing baseless personal attacks with ZERO evidence,” McEnany tweeted Monday. “Jake’s real problem: I do not leak. I do not lie. But I DO call out the lies of the media (i.e. CNN Russia collusion hoax!).”

There is zero evidence to support her claim that the media created the “Russia collusion hoax.” McEnany appeared to be referring to the nearly two-year-long Russian election interference investigation, ultimately spearheaded by former special counsel Robert Mueller, who determined there were at least 10 instances of possible obstruction by Trump on the matter, and myriad ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and beyond.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.