Kayleigh McEnany said she didn't lie in the White House briefing room because she went to Oxford, Harvard, and Georgetown and was a Christian
- Former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she didn't lie in the White House briefing room.
- She wrote in a new book that she never lied because she went to Harvard, Oxford, and Georgetown.
Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany wrote in her new memoir that she didn't lie to reporters and the public while serving in the Trump administration because she was trained at elite universities and was a Christian.
McEnany recalled being asked by the White House press corps during her first briefing as President Donald Trump's fourth press secretary in May 2020 to pledge to never lie from the podium. She promised she would not and wrote in "For Such a Time As This" that she was a truthful person by nature and training.
"Of course, I would never lie," she wrote. "How do you get through Oxford, Harvard, and Georgetown without sourcing? Without truthful, well-sourced, well-researched information? More importantly, as a woman of faith, a Christian, and a new mother, telling the truth was in my nature and central to my family life and faith walk."
Throughout her book, McEnany was critical of the press, aside from conservative outlets, and repeatedly accused outlets of having a liberal bias and reporting unfairly about the administration. She wrote that her assurance that she wouldn't lie didn't improve her relationship with the press: It "did not stop some in the press from spinning things wildly out of context, twisting my words, assuming the worst, and engaging in ad hominem attacks — like falsely calling me a 'liar.'"
During her time as press secretary, McEnany said, among other things:
- Trump never downplayed the risk of the novel coronavirus.
- He told the veteran reporter Bob Woodward on tape that he lied about the severity of the virus so the public wouldn't panic. Multiple reports have since corroborated that.
- Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
- He lost to Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and lost the Electoral College by a margin of 232 to Biden's 306.
- The Mueller report concluded with "the complete and total exoneration of President Trump."
- The special counsel's team declined to make a judgment on whether to charge Trump with a crime because of decades-old Justice Department legal guidance. But it specified: "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment."
- One million people attended the "Million MAGA March" after the November 2020 election in support of Trump.
- As Insider previously reported, multiple news outlets estimated that attendance was somewhere in the thousands, and PolitiFact added: "It's mathematically impossible for more than 135,000 people to fit in the location that McEnany tweeted a photo of."
- Democrats facilitated widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
- McEnany's claims were so outlandish that Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto cut away as she spoke in the briefing room on November 9, days after news outlets had called the election for Biden. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," he said. "I just think we have to be very clear: She's charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting, unless she has more details to back that up, I can't in good countenance continue to show you this."
- "Biden admits to voter fraud."
- In October 2020, McEnany tweeted, "Biden admits to voter fraud," accompanied by an edited and out-of-context video of Biden doing an interview on "Pod Save America." In the full interview, Biden answered a question about what he would say to those who hadn't voted in the 2020 election and didn't plan to. He said: "The Republicans are doing everything they can to make it harder for people to vote. We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter-fraud organization in the history of American politics."