6 absurd comments made by Trump's new press secretary

Donald Trump has now moved on to his fourth press secretary, with the White House announcing on Tuesday that it had replaced Stephanie Grisham with Kayleigh McEnany.

McEnany, who until Tuesday served as the national press secretary for Trump’s reelection campaign, rose to prominence in 2016 as a CNN contributor.

McEnany was a law student, not a media figure, when CNN president Jeff Zucker put her on the air as a Trump supporter during the 2016 election. She made a name for herself making wild comments in defense of Trump’s actions.

And she has a deep file of comments to comb through.

Here are six of the most ridiculous comments Trump’s newest White House press secretary has made.

“We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.”

On Feb. 25, as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to take hold in the United States, McEnany appeared on Fox News and declared that the new coronavirus would not overtake the United States.

“We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here. We will not see terrorism come here. And isn’t that refreshing, when contrasting it with the awful presidency of Barack Obama,” she said.

Since then, and as of April 6, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country has ballooned to 380,749, with 11,931 people having died of the disease, according to the New York Times.

“He doesn’t lie.”

In August 2019, McEnany appeared on CNN and said that Trump has never lied to the public.

Of course, Trump has lied thousands of times since taking office.

As of Jan. 19, Trump had made 16,241 “false or misleading claims,” according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker.

But when asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo whether Trump had ever lied, McEnany said he hadn’t: “No, I don’t think this president has lied,” she claimed.

After giving McEnany several chances to rethink her answer, Cuomo abruptly ended the interview.

“That’s unfair of you to ask Donald Trump to do that because he would be depriving his children of their livelihood.”

After the 2016 election, before Trump took office, he was criticized for not relinquishing control of his personal financial holdings. McEnany defended him, saying that forcing Trump to do what his predecessors had done before him was unfair to his adult children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, who have all occupied positions in various areas of the Trump Organization.

She added, “You’re discouraging people in the private sector from running for office.”

Of course, the potential for conflicts of interest in the decision-making of a politician who knows how such decisions will affect his personal finances is enormous. But McEnany seemed to suggest that Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric could not get by without their father maintaining that control regardless.

“He said he starts to kiss a woman and then they let him do X, Y or Z. That implies consent.”

In 2016, McEnany appeared on CNN and defended Trump’s remarks in the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

In that recording, Trump said, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

McEnany spent the interview claiming that she thought Trump’s comments were “despicable,” but insisted that he had apologized for them, and added, “I don’t think he was saying that that’s what he does in his own life.”

The Confederate flag symbolizes “southern pride.”

After a Confederate flag was flown by a supporter at a Trump rally during the 2016 presidential campaign, McEnany said that, while the flag “does symbolize racism” for many people and shouldn’t have been at the rally, she didn’t think everyone who flies a Confederate flag is racist.

“I do think that’s unfair … to call every person ignorant who has that flag, I think that is really kind of an ignorant statement in and of itself,” she said.

“I know Mr. Trump believes like Martin Luther King that people should not be judged for the color of their skin but the content of their character.”

In May 2016, the Trump campaign had just chosen a white supremacist as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Commenting, McEnany compared Trump to King, and said, “I think that this idea that Trump somehow OK’d this or was in Trump Tower trying to seek out white nationalists to make as his delegates is a crazy thought.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.