Kayleigh
McEnany Watch: Abetting a coup
Opinion by
Media critic
Dec. 16, 2020 at 3:50 p.m. CST
Fifteenth in an occasional series on White House press secretary
Kayleigh McEnany, to prove the impossibility of speaking for
President Trump.
White House press
secretary Kayleigh McEnany makes a lot of news. Every time she takes questions
from White House reporters, she says enough preposterous, false and risible
things to launch hundreds of stories. Based on her Tuesday appearance at the
White House lectern, news organizations covered her “victory lap” on vaccine development;
her discussion of President Trump’s intent to veto the National Defense
Authorization Act; her non-answer to a question about Trump’s
reaction to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recognizing Joe Biden as
president-elect; and her “lazy attacks” on the media.
All perfectly fine
stories.
Here’s what didn’t
happen: News organizations did not heap coverage on a McEnany response to a
question about the coming weeks. In the 2016 presidential transition, Trump was
able to secure confirmation of key cabinet picks before the inauguration. Would
Trump oppose a similar process for Biden’s nominees? “I think that’s a
hypothetical,” said McEnany, articulating a lie: Biden is the president-elect
and his nominees will come before the Senate sooner or later. “And, you know,
he 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.”
Boldface added to
highlight a euphemism: A “continuation of power” is also called a “coup.”
Just one day before
McEnany’s briefing — the first since Dec. 2 — electors across the country affirmed Biden’s 306-232 victory in
the electoral college. In past cycles, the electoral college vote
was a formality, little covered by the media. Thanks to the dozens of lawsuits
from Trump and Republicans seeking to overturn the 2020 results, the activities
of the electors this year were a topic of close attention.
Despite all the
courthouse defeats — including a Supreme Court smackdown of the lawsuit from
the Texas attorney general attempting to annul the popular vote in four states
— McEnany & Co. trudge onward. “The president is still involved in ongoing
litigation related to the election. Yesterday’s [electoral college] vote was
one step in the constitutional process. So I will leave that to him and refer
you to the campaign for more on that litigation,” said McEnany in Tuesday’s
briefing.
The real briefing,
however, took place hours later, when McEnany appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox
News program. Running the Trump propaganda arm for five years confers certain
privileges on Hannity, who doesn’t get the old contact-the-campaign runaround
when he asks about election challenges. In response to Hannity’s question about
a “forensic analysis” of voting machines, McEnany responded, “Well, it just
shows that the machines had a very high error rate,” she said. “So what these
forensic experts found is that when you have a 60 percent error rate, what that
meant is the ballots then went to adjudication. And in process, that’s where
the poll workers needed the safeguards, the signature-matching, the address
verification. And when it goes to that point of adjudication, it’s there where
those safeguards are so necessary.”'
Consider these
numbers: McEnany has appeared on “Hannity” at least 21 times since the
election; during the same time period, she has given three White House press
briefings. In a statement to this blog last
week, she defended herself: “As White House Press Secretary, there are
a variety of ways to communicate with the American People that don’t involve
being shouted at by activists, including the manner in which I’m communicating
with you right now.”
What irony: On the
one hand, McEnany is denouncing White House reporters as “activists,”
presumably for calling out the president on his mendacious schemes. On the
other hand, McEnany is abetting that man’s attempt to undo American democracy —
an effort that qualifies as “activism” of a darker sort. As she left the
lectern on Tuesday, CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta told her,
“Kayleigh, isn’t it hypocritical for you to accuse others of disinformation
when you spread it every day?”
That was another
story line to emerge from Tuesday’s briefing.