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Kayleigh McEnany, national press secretary for the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign, speaks at a "Keep America Great" campaign rally on January 9, 2020
- Kayleigh McEnany, the newly-named White House press secretary for President Donald Trump, claimed in a February 25 interview on Fox Business that the novel coronavirus wouldn't come to America.
- "We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism, and isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of Barack Obama?" McEnany said.
- While McEnany claims she was specifically referring to Trump's actions to limit travel to the US from China, The New York Times reported that nearly 40,000 people flew from China to US despite the restrictions.
- McEnany, who is currently the national press secretary for Trump's re-election campaign, will replace Stephanie Grisham, who served as White House press secretary beginning in July 2019.
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Kayleigh McEnany, the newly-named White House press secretary for President Donald Trump, claimed in late February that the novel coronavirus wouldn't come to America right before cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, skyrocketed.
McEnany, who is currently the national press secretary for Trump's re-election campaign, will replace Stephanie Grisham, who began working as White House press secretary beginning in July 2019 and ended her tenure on April 7 without holding a single press briefing.
Grisham, who previously served as the top spokeswoman for First Lady Melania Trump, will return to the East Wing as the First Lady's chief of staff.
Before joining the Trump campaign, McEnany was a top spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee and was a vocal presence on CNN during the 2016 election, frequently clashing with the network's hosts and fellow contributors.
In a February 25 appearance on Fox Business' "Trish Reagan Primetime" McEnany downplayed the threat of the novel coronavirus and attacked former President Barack Obama.
"Looking at the coronavirus, and with the president saying, 'look, we're not going to be taking in people from China right now,' isn't it just a matter of protecting our national security being really at stake, and he's sort of the first line of defense there," Regan said.
"Absolutely, this president will always put America first, he will always protect American citizens," McEnany said. "We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism, and isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of Barack Obama?"
Tweet Embed://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1246454626905468931?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
On the same day Larry Kudlow said coronavirus was "contained" on Feb. 25th, Trump's campaign spox made an even more bold claim.
"We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here..and isn't it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama." pic.twitter.com/O0DDH3Rvkw
McEnany claimed that her words were taken out of context, and that she was specifically referring to Trump's moves to limit and ban travel from China in a Twitter thread responding to CNN's Andrew Kacynski.
But as The New York Times reported on April 4, almost 40,000 people still flew from China to the United States on 279 separate flights in the two months after Trump placed restrictions on air travel from China to the United States.
Six weeks after McEnany claimed the coronavirus wouldn't come to America, there are now 360,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States with over 11,000 American deaths caused by the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Reagan herself was let go from Fox Business on March 28, after she went on a rant calling media coverage of coronavirus outbreak "a scam" and accused Democrats of using the crisis as an opportunity to impeach Trump again.
"Many in the liberal media are using, and I mean using, coronavirus in an attempt to demonize and destroy the president," Reagan said in a March 9 segment with a backdrop showing the words "coronavirus impeachment scam."
McEnany's installment as White House press secretary is part of a larger shake-up of the White House communications staff under new White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina.
Alyssa Farah, the top spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, will be detailed to the White House as the director of strategic communications and Ben Williamson, a senior advisor to Meadows, will move into a new role as a senior advisor for communications, Bloomberg reported.
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