Kayleigh McEnany | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2020 | |
| 33rdWhite House Press Secretary | |
| In office April 7, 2020 – January 20, 2021 | |
| President | Donald Trump |
| Deputy | Hogan Gidley Brian R. Morgenstern |
| Preceded by | Stephanie Grisham |
| Succeeded by | Jen Psaki |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Kayleigh Michelle McEnany (1988-04-18)April 18, 1988 (age 37) Tampa, Florida, U.S. |
| Party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Georgetown University (BS) St Edmund Hall, Oxford Harvard University (JD) |
| Occupation |
|
Kayleigh McEnany speaks on federal aid to hospitals during theCOVID-19 pandemic Recorded May 1, 2020 | |
Kayleigh Michelle McEnany[1] (/ˈkeɪliˈmækənɛni/;[2] born April 18, 1988) is an American political commentator, media personality, and former political spokesperson who served as the 33rdWhite House press secretary during thefirst Trump administration from 2020 to 2021.
Early in the2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, she was a critic ofDonald Trump but over time became one of his staunchest defenders. In 2017, she was appointed national spokesperson for theRepublican National Committee. She worked for theTrump 2020 presidential campaign as national press secretary from 2019 to 2020[3] and again as senior advisor from October 2020 to January 2021.
McEnany began her media career as a producer forHuckabee onFox News. She later worked as a commentator onCNN. Following her time in the Trump administration, she became an on-air contributor forFox News and serves as a co-host ofOutnumbered and host ofSaturday in America with Kayleigh McEnany. She is also a primary guest host forThe Ingraham Angle,Jesse Watters Primetime,Hannity,The Five, andFox & Friends.
McEnany was born and raised inTampa, Florida.[4][5] She is the daughter of commercial roofing company owner Michael and Leanne McEnany.[5] She also has a younger sister, Ryann McEnany.[6] McEnany attended theAcademy of the Holy Names,[7] a private Catholicpreparatory school in Tampa. After graduating, she majored in international politics atGeorgetown University'sSchool of Foreign Service inWashington, D.C.,[8] and she studied abroad atSt Edmund Hall, Oxford.[9][10] While at Oxford, she was taught politics by future BritishLabour politicianNick Thomas-Symonds.[11][9] After graduating from Georgetown in 2010, McEnany spent three years as a producer on theMike Huckabee Show.[8]
McEnany attended theUniversity of Miami School of Law for her first (1L) year before transferring toHarvard Law School.[4] At the Miami School of Law, McEnany received theBruce J. Winick Award for Excellence, a scholarship awarded to students in the top 1% of their class.[8] She graduated from Harvard in 2016.[4]
As a college student, McEnany interned for several politicians, includingTom Gallagher,Adam Putnam andGeorge W. Bush, and later worked in theWhite House Office of Communications, where she wrote media briefings.[8]
While in law school, McEnany appeared onCNN as a paid commentator. She supportedDonald Trump in the2016 presidential election.[12][13][14] In early 2015, before becoming a Trump supporter, McEnany was highly critical of him, declaring on CNN andFox Business that "Donald Trump has shown himself to be a showman" and it was "unfortunate" and "inauthentic" to call him a Republican. McEnany called his comments about Mexican immigrants "racist".[15] According to Michael Marcantonio, a fellow summer associate at a law firm, she began supporting Trump after accepting Marcantonio's advice, which he gave to her over cocktails. In an interview with the New York Times, Marcantonio recalled telling McEnany, "Donald Trump is going to be your nominee," and that if "a smart, young, blond Harvard graduate" wanted "to get on television and have a career as a political pundit, you would be wise to be an early backer."[16]
On August 5, 2017, McEnany left her position at CNN.[17] The following day, she hosted a 90-second webcast,Real News Update[18] on Trump's personalFacebook page. She praised Trump throughout the segment, saying she had brought the "real news" to the American people.[19]
Former employerMike Huckabee has called her a "meticulous researcher" and "extraordinarily prepared." Her rapid occupational success was noted byVan Jones, who worked with her at CNN: "I'm not trying to defend the messaging, but what I hope people can acknowledge is there's very few people in either party who can accomplish what Kayleigh has accomplished in such a short time... People keep taking her lightly, and they keep regretting it."[4]
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McEnany has been closely associated with the Republican Party since she was in college. She was critical of theObama presidency, and in 2012 posted severaltweets questioningBarack Obama's birthplace, echoing the"birther" conspiracy theorist movement.[20] In 2012, McEnany tweeted about Obama's half-brotherMalik Obama, who lives inKenya: "How I Met Your Brother – Never mind, forgot he's still in that hut in Kenya".[4]
In 2017, she said it was hypocritical to accuse President Trump of spending time playing golf when Obama had done the same thing after the 2002 beheading ofDaniel Pearl. McEnany later apologized for the comment, acknowledging that Obama was a senator at the time although he did go golfing after the 2014 beheading of another journalist,James Foley, by ISIS in Syria. Obama, who was vacationing onMartha's Vineyard at the time, admitted that he should have "anticipated the optics" of golfing immediately after making a press statement on Foley's death.[21][22]
On August 7, 2017, theRepublican National Committee (RNC) appointed McEnany as its national spokesperson.[23][24] In 2017, as RNC spokeswoman, McEnany supported Trump amid a bipartisan backlash in response to his comments about awhite supremacist rally inCharlottesville, Virginia, in which he suggested thatwhite supremacists andanti-racist counterprotesters shared blame for violence; in a tweet, McEnany wrote that the Republican Party supported Trump's "message of love and inclusiveness."[25]
In August 2019, afterThe Washington Post reported that Trump had made 16,241 false or misleading statements in his first three years in office, McEnany told CNN'sChris Cuomo: "I don't believe the president has lied."[26]
In the weeks before her appointment as White House press secretary, McEnany praised Trump's handling of theCOVID-19 pandemic, saying, "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, and isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of Barack Obama?"[27][28] The disease had been present in the United States for at least a month prior to McEnany's claim that the virus would not "come here"; in December 2020Politico named McEnany's prediction one of "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year".[29] In March 2020, McEnany said Democrats were trying "to politicize" the coronavirus and that Democrats were almost "rooting for this outcome."[20]
In the weeks following, McEnany was criticized for her remarks. Author Grant Sterntweeted, "Kayleigh McEnany is coming to the White House with new 'alternative facts' about #coronavirus. The rest of the world calls them lies." McEnany responded that she was referring to Trump'stravel ban.[20]
AfterMark Meadows replacedMick Mulvaney as White House chief of staff in April 2020, Meadows's first personnel change was hiring McEnany as White House press secretary on April 7, 2020, which was officially announced the next day.[30]Stephanie Grisham, who had served in the role and asWhite House communications director since June 2019, becameFirst LadyMelania Trump's chief of staff and spokesperson.[31]
Two months into her tenure, theAssociated Press wrote of McEnany, she "has made clear from her first briefing that she's willing to defend her boss's view of himself as well as his most flagrant misstatements."[32]
In April 2020, McEnany defended Trump's assertion that theWorld Health Organization had shown a "clear bias towards China" and said that the WHO put Americans at risk by "repeatinginaccurate claims peddled by China during the coronavirus pandemic" and "opposing the United States' life-saving travel restrictions."[33]
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On May 1, 2020, as part of her first public press briefing and the first one by a White House press secretary in 417 days, McEnany was asked by an Associated Press reporter: "Will you pledge to never lie to us from that podium?" McEnany replied: "I will never lie to you. You have my word on that."[34][35] On the subject of Trump's responses to thecoronavirus pandemic, she claimed, "This president has always sided on the side of data". In response toallegations of Trump's sexual misconduct, McEnany said: "He has always told the truth."[35] McEnany falsely claimed that theMueller Report as part of the larger investigation intoRussian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election had resulted in a "complete and total exoneration of President Trump," despite the report reading "Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."[36]
Amid reports on May 8, 2020, that the White House was "shelving" the release of COVID-19 re-opening guidelines, McEnany said that the guidelines had not been approved byRobert Redfield, the director of theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Following Associated Press reports that Redfield had previously cleared the release of the guidance, Redfield addressed the issue personally, saying that the documents were still in "draft form" and had been released for "interagency review", not for public dissemination.[37][38] That same week, Obama, in a private phone call with members of his former administration, described the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus crisis as "an absolute chaotic disaster". McEnany responded the next day by providing a statement to CNN claiming that, to the contrary, the "response has been unprecedented and saved American lives."[39]
In May 2020, McEnany defended Trump's false accusation thatJoe Scarborough had a person murdered, offering no evidence in support of the accusation.[40] The same month, McEnany defended claims that Trump made about the dangers ofvote by mail, repeating his inaccurate claims that vote by mail has a "high propensity for voter fraud." McEnany herself has voted by mail 11 times in 10 years.[41]
In June 2020, she defended theTrump administration's decision to forcibly remove peaceful protestors using smoke canisters, pepper balls, riot shields, batons, officers on horseback andrubber bullets[42] so that Trump could stage a photo op in front ofSt. John's Episcopal Church in Washington. She likened Trump's action to that ofWinston Churchill walking the streets to survey bomb damage during World War II.[43] When GeneralJim Mattis, formersecretary of defense in the Trump administration, condemned Trump's action, McEnany described Mattis' comments as "little more than a self-promotional stunt to appease the DC elite."[44]
On September 9, 2020, news agencies released the audio recordings of interviews with Trump that formerWashington Post journalistBob Woodward had conducted in February and March 2020 for his bookRage, in which Trump acknowledged to Woodward that he was intentionally downplaying the severity of theSARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which CNN had obtained ahead of the book's September 15, 2020 release.[45] In the wake of this development, McEnany falsely asserted, "The president never downplayed the virus."[46] In fact, Trump repeatedly and publicly downplayed the risk of the virus and the severity of the pandemic, and in a recorded March 19, 2020 interview with Woodward said, "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."[46] In response to McEnany's comment,Washington Post media criticErik Wemple wrote that she had sacrificed her credibility;[47] whileJoe Lockhart, who served as White House Press Secretary during the Clinton administration, wrote her answers confirmed her as a "state propagandist".[48]
On October 5, 2020, McEnany tested positive forCOVID-19.[49][50] Even though she had interacted with individuals who had been diagnosed with coronavirus days prior, McEnany on several occasions spoke with the press while not wearing a mask before she ultimately tested positive for the coronavirus.[49] Among McEnany's staff members to also test positive for COVID-19 was Chad Gilmartin,[51] the cousin of McEnany's husband.[52]
While ballots were still being counted on election day, McEnany made an early false declaration of victory for Trump.[53] AfterJoe Biden won the election and Trump refused to concede, McEnany spreadfalse claims of fraud in the 2020 election.[54][55] On November 20, 2020, McEnany falsely claimed Trump was not given an "orderly transition of power".[56][57] Previously in 2016, within two days of Trump's victory, his opponentHillary Clinton conceded to Trump, while then-PresidentBarack Obama had recognized Trump as president-elect and hosted him at the White House. Trump himself thanked Obama and his wifeMichelle "for their gracious aid throughout this transition". Trump fired the leader of his transition team (Chris Christie), threw out months of transition planning, and rejected help from theObama administration.[58] McEnany's comment was stated while Trump himself was refusing to recognize Biden's victory as legitimate; Trump was also actively delaying the start of a transfer of power to president-elect Biden for two weeks.[59]
Following the2021 storming of the United States Capitol,Randall Lane, writing forForbes, warned corporations against hiring McEnany or other people "who lied for Trump", stating that "Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We're going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we'd approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world's biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away."[60]
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On March 2, 2021, McEnany joined Fox News as an on-air contributor.[61] She was later named co-host ofOutnumbered, alongsideHarris Faulkner andEmily Compagno.[62]
In May and June 2023, she served as an interim host ofFox News Tonight following the firing ofTucker Carlson.[63] In May, in response to McEnany claiming that Trump's then primary rival Florida GovernorRon DeSantis was gaining on Trump in the polls for the Iowa primary, Trump called her “Kayleigh Milktoast McEnany”, an insult likely a misspelling of the wordmilquetoast.[64]
In September 2025, Fox News announced that McEnany was named host of a new Saturday morning program calledSaturday in America with Kayleigh McEnany airing from 10am-12pm every Saturday morning beginning on September 20.[65]
McEnany marriedSean Gilmartin, apitcher inMajor League Baseball, in November 2017.[66][67] The couple have one daughter who was born in November 2019.[68][69] Due to aBRCA mutation that put her at high risk of developingbreast cancer, McEnany underwent a preventivedouble mastectomy in 2018.[70] In June 2022, she announced that she and her husband were expecting their second child.[71] In December 2022, the couple welcomed a baby boy.[72]
On March 17, 2025 McEnany announced onOutnumbered that she and Gilmartin were expecting their third child in June 2025.[73] It was announced on June 30, 2025 that she had given birth to a baby girl named Avery Grace.[74]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)On cue, McEnany trampled the on-the-record remarks of her boss. 'The president never downplayed the virus, once again,' said McEnany, who at this very moment was taking her place alongside Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders with her willingness to sacrifice her credibility for a man who cares about nothing but himself.
In her Friday press briefing, McEnany mischaracterized what followed the 2016 election and Trump's victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
McEnany's statements came nearly two weeks after the 2020 election was called for president-elect Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | White House Press Secretary 2020–2021 | Succeeded by |
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