"A Harvard Law Degree in Mendacity": Kayleigh McEnany Hasn’t Stopped Lying Since She Vowed To “Never Lie”
August 27, 2020
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany points to a reporter to take a question at a White House press briefing (The White House)
By Emily Singer
American Independent Foundation
On May 1, 2020, when Kayleigh McEnany delivered her first daily press conference from the White House briefing room, she made a promise.
“I will never lie to you,” McEnany told the media gathered in the room. “You have my word on that.”
McEnany, however, did not adhere to that pledge.
In the three months that have passed since she made her vow, she’s lied at least 19 times — adopting the behavior of her press secretary predecessors, who lied to the American public countless times to defend Donald Trump.
In fact, her first lie came during the very briefing where she said she’d never lie.
McEnany is now slated to speak Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, which has featured Trump aides and family members flagrantly lying to try to boost Trump’s dismal approval rating and sagging poll numbers. That makes it very possible her list of lies and distortions will grow.
For now, here are 19 lies and falsehoods McEnany has told since promising to tell the truth:
McEnany called the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh ‘verifiably false’
Minutes after vowing not to lie, McEnany lied about the sexual assault allegations levied against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.
McEnany brought them up to attack presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who was accused of sexual assault by former aide Tara Reade. Biden has denied Reade’s allegations.
McEnany, however, said the allegations against Biden were “far more compelling” than those made against Kavanaugh, which she called “salacious, awful, and verifiably false.”
While Kavanaugh denied the allegations, they were never verified to be false, as McEnany claimed.
McEnany falsely said there was a ‘handwritten FBI note’ about Michael Flynn saying the law enforcement agency had to ‘get him fired’
Also in her first briefing, McEnany lied about the evidence against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
McEnany said there was an FBI note that said “we need to get [Flynn] to lie” in order to “get him fired.”
That is simply not true. She twisted the words in the note to make it sound more damning.
The note McEnany is referring to actually says this: “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired? If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide. Or, if he initially lies, then we present him [redacted] & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address it.”
McEnany said the Mueller report was a ‘complete and total exoneration’ of Trump
Also during that first briefing in which she vowed not to lie, McEnany delivered yet another lie about the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The Mueller report did not exonerate Trump. In fact, it explicitly states, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
The report laid out 11 instances in which Trump may have obstructed justice, but Mueller concluded he did not have the power to indict a sitting president.
McEnany said Trump’s ‘intent is always to give truthful information to the American people’
In May, after McEnany tried to attack the media for not telling the truth, she was asked by a reporter whether she believes Trump “has never lied to the public before.”
That’s when she said this: “I’m around the President. His intent is always to give truthful information to the American people.”
As of July 13, Trump has told more than 20,000 lies and untruths since taking the oath of office, according to the Washington Post’s fact checker, which reported that Trump’s pace of lies increased as the COVID-19 pandemic exploded, the economy tanked, and racial justice protests all threatened to sink his reelection bid.
“Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded nearly 500 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times,” the Washington Post wrote.
McEnany lied about Romney’s share of the Black vote
In June, McEnany was asked whether Trump agreed with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) that “Black lives matter,” which Romney said as protests against police violence spread.
McEnany refused to say that Trump believed Black lives matter, instead choosing to lie about the share of the Black vote Romney received in his failed 2012 presidential bid.
“Mitt Romney can say three words outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, but I would note this: that President Trump won 8% of the black vote. Mitt Romney won 2% of the black vote,” McEnany said.
But Romney received 6% of the Black vote in 2012, according to exit polls. Trump did get 8%, a dismally low number that McEnany still chose to highlight.
In fact, the 8% of Black voters Trump won is lower than the 11% of Black voters former President George W. Bush won in 2004, and the 12% of Black voters Republican Bob Dole won in 1996, according to exit polls.
McEnany said Trump doesn’t use the term ‘kung-flu’ after he was recorded saying it
At a June 22 news briefing, McEnany claimed Trump doesn’t use the term “kung-flu” to describe the coronavirus, a nickname even the Trump administration admitted was “highly offensive.”
In fact, Trump had used the term “kung-flu” just two days prior at a campaign rally in Tulsa. He also used the term the day after McEnany defended him, at an event in Phoenix.
McEnany said that Trump wasn’t briefed on Russian bounties
When a bombshell New York Times report revealed there was intelligence showing that Russia put bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan, reporters demanded to know why Trump never spoke out about it or took any action.
That’s when McEnany said Trump didn’t say anything because he didn’t know about it.
“This was not briefed up to the president because it was not, in fact, verified,” McEnany claimed at a briefing.
Multiple reports say the intelligence was given to Trump in his daily briefing book, and that if he didn’t know about it, it was because he chose not to read it.
McEnany said Trump is tested for coronavirus multiple times a day. Trump said that’s false.
McEnany was asked at a briefing why Trump refused to wear masks in public, despite guidance from public health experts who say doing so is one of the most effective ways to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
In response, McEnany claimed Trump didn’t have to wear a mask because he’s “tested often.”
“I’m not going to read out exactly how many times he’s tested a day, but sometimes it is more than one time a day,” McEnany said.
Later that day, Trump revealed she was lying by saying he is not tested multiple times a day but rather every few days.
McEnany said that Trump’s tax returns are under audit and can’t be released
After the Supreme Court ruled that Trump cannot refuse to turn over his financial records to investigators, McEnany told the same lie that Trump has used for years.
“You know, the media has been asking this question for four years, and for four years, the President has said the same thing: His taxes are under audit, and when they’re no longer under audit, he will release them,” McEnany said.
However, Trump’s own lawyer admitted that the tax returns are not under audit, blowing up Trump’s excuse for not releasing them.
“All these tax returns have by and large — maybe not the last one — but all of them have been audited, all of them have either been passed on or settled,” Rudy Giuliani said on July 12.
McEnany said Trump has a ‘great record’ on LGBTQ issues
“He has a great record when it comes to the LGBT community,” McEnany said on July 13. “The Trump administration eased a ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men and he launched a plan to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. So we’re very proud of our achievements.”
Trump has actually made at least 153 attacks against the LGBTQ community, according to GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project.
McEnany said ‘Paw Patrol’ was canceled
“We saw a few weeks ago that ‘Paw Patrol,’ a cartoon show about cops, was canceled,” McEnany said at a news briefing on July 24, a complaint against so-called “cancel culture.”
The show has not been canceled.
McEnany accused Biden of ‘hiding in a basement’
McEnany pushed the Fox News-fueled lie that Biden is in his basement rather than campaigning.
Biden has been campaigning, and is not in his basement.
McEnany lied about Goodyear’s policy after Trump demanded a boycott against its tires
After Trump ordered his supporters to boycott Goodyear tires because the company doesn’t allow its employees to express any political support in the workplace, McEnany lied about the company’s policy to defend Trump’s comments.
McEnany said Goodyear “failed to clarify” its policy, even though the tire company issued a statement explicitly stating that it’s not just Donald Trump gear that’s not allowed, but rather clothing that supports any political campaign.
McEnany lied about the role of children in spreading the coronavirus
As she sought to defend Trump’s demands that schools fully reopen despite the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus in large swaths of the United States, McEnany lied about what health experts have said about how kids transmit the virus.
“Just last week you heard Dr. Redfield say that children are not spreading this,” McEnany said on Fox News in July, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s director, Robert Redfield.
That is a lie. Redfield said they have not ruled out the possibility that children can spread the virus.
McEnany said Trump was just joking when he said he wanted to slow down coronavirus testing
After Trump said at a rally in Oklahoma that he wanted to slow down testing for the coronavirus, McEnany told reporters that Trump’s remark was just “a comment that he made in jest. It’s a comment that he made in passing.”
Afterward, Trump once again made a liar out of her when he told reporters, “I don’t kid, let me just tell you, let me make it clear.”
McEnany said bases named for Confederates ‘honor’ Black soldiers
After Trump repeatedly vowed to block Congress from ordering new names for military bases currently named for Confederate officers, McEnany said the base names honor Black soldiers.
“When you think of Fort Bragg, we think of the brave soldiers that deployed from there,” McEnany said. “The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion — this was the first Black parachute battalion, trained at this fort. We must recognize the sacrifices made by these men and women, some of whom saw Fort Bragg for the last time before they went overseas.”
In fact, 54% of Black Americans want to military bases named for Confederates to change their names, according to a Morning Consult poll from June.
McEnany said there are ‘questions’ about whether a man brutalized by police was faking his injuries
After Trump promoted a baseless conspiracy theory that a 75-year-old man who was pushed to the ground by police officers was faking his injuries, McEnany took Trump’s side in the baseless smear.
“The president was raising questions based on a report that he saw. They are questions that need to be asked,” McEnany said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
While Trump claimed the man was faking his injuries, the video of the attack makes it clear that he was hurt, as blood pooled around his head after he was knocked to the ground. The man was hospitalized for days with a skull fracture.
McEnany said Trump has a ‘history’ of condemning racism and white supremacy
When McEnany was asked why Trump hasn’t designated white supremacists as domestic terrorists, she lied, saying that Trump has a “long history of condemning white supremacy and racism.”
Trump called white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 “very fine people,” and called countries with a majority of nonwhite residents “shithole” nations.
McEnany lied about Trump’s voting by mail
As Trump came under fire for attacking voting by mail even while he votes by mail himself, McEnany defended his actions, saying he wasn’t in Florida and thus could not vote in person.
However, Trump was in Florida during the early voting period and even played golf at his course, which is “across the street from a library where early voting was offered from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” according to a report from the Sun-Sentinel.
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