Incoming press secretary's coronavirus dismissals mirrored Trump's
Like her new boss, incoming White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has a history of downplaying the coronavirus.
McEnany, the current national press secretary for President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, will soon step into a new role as the White House's chief spokeswoman. A familiar face for cable news viewers, McEnany's commentary on the global pandemic has lagged behind the warnings of public health experts but been in lockstep with Trump's rhetoric.
“This president will always put America first. He will always protect American citizens. 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 President Obama?” McEnany said on Fox News in late February.
That clip resurfaced last weekend when a CNN reporter posted it to Twitter. McEnany called the reporter's post "ridiculous spin" and claimed that her remarks had been in reference to Trump's decision to ban non-U.S. citizens from entering the country from parts of China. She insisted her comment had been backed up by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“When I said this, @realDonaldTrump had already taken early action: assembled task force & issued travel restrictions," she wrote on Twitter.
Trump has long pointed to his travel ban from China as step that he claims saved countless lives in the U.S. Nonetheless, his administration's coronavirus response has been widely criticized as slow-footed in ramping up testing and facilitating the distribution of badly needed supplies to hot spots like New York and California. More than 10,000 Americans have died from complications related to the virus, and the U.S. has well over 300,000 confirmed cases.
McEnany also defended the president's reluctance to cancel his campaign rallies, despite health officials' growing concerns about large public gatherings, in a TV appearance early last month.
"We have the added advantage here at the Trump campaign that our candidate happens to be the president of the United States, who is surrounded by the best and most talented health experts in the world," she told Fox Business host Stuart Varney.
Varney challenged her response, noting that Dr. Fauci had already suggested there should be no large crowds. McEnany quickly pivoted to an attack on former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Look, we have the commander in chief, we have the best health experts, we are taking it day by day, we are currently proceeding as normal — and look, Joe Biden, he’s suspending his rallies," McEnany said. "He’s been dying to get off the campaign trail. The man can only speak for seven minutes. So no wonder he wants to suspend his rallies."
McEnany also invoked Fauci's name in taking shots at the media, which has done critical reporting of the president's handling of the crisis.
“You know, I don’t take my points from the New York Times, but from Dr. Fauci, who’s a renowned expert in this area who has said that the unprecedented efforts that this president has taken, the travel restrictions in January, the task force put together in January before the coronavirus even had a name, the mandatory quarantines. This saved lives,” McEnany said in mid-March.
McEnany has not always stood in Trump's corner. During the GOP primary in 2015, she said that Trump wasn't "a serious candidate" and that he said “outrageous things” that were out of step with mainstream Republicans like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush.
But she swiftly evolved into one of Trump’s most avid supporters, defending him as a CNN pundit. She later left CNN and appeared in a series of Pro-Trump ‘newscasts’ before being named the new Republican National Committee spokesperson in August of 2017.
