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To cable news aficionados, Kayleigh McEnany needs no introduction. Her loyally conservative reputation preceded the announcement Tuesday that she was being hired as the White House’s fourth press secretary in as many years. But one aspect of her very privileged existence that has allowed her mediocrity to reach the heights of the executive branch of government but hasn’t been highlighted is McEnany’s past as a hardcore Barack Obama “birther” conspiracy theorist. Most recently, she bolstered her less than stellar resume by following the misguided lead of President Donald Trump and downplaying the threat of the coronavirus that has since become a deadly global pandemic claiming more than 12,000 American lives and infecting more than 386,000 others.
Much like her new boss, the former CNN pundit who most recently worked as the national press secretary for the Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign has made no secret of her contempt for the first Black president. And McEnany has done so by spreading misinformation (also known as lies), which, obviously, is not the best quality for a press secretary. But it is on a par with her predecessors for this administration, except for Stephanie Grisham, the former press secretary for first lady Melania Trump who got her old job back Tuesday when it was announced McEnany was taking her spot. Grisham famously never briefed the press during her unimpressive nine-month stint in the position.
Some of McEnany’s tasteless tweets about Obama do everything from addressing him disrespectfully to using the racist dog whistle of questioning his religion to expressing doubt about the validity of his birth certificate to mocking how Africans live because Obama’s brother lives in Kenya to implying she’d be okay with Obama being shot under the context of illegal immigration.
In fact, she has expressed her apparent blind hate for Obama to the point she has confused even herself, like the time she tried to blame the 44th president for allegedly not reacting as she would have liked a president to react after the Islamic State group beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl. There was only one problem, though: Obama wasn’t president at the time. See the embarrassing stumble on live TV below.
It may also just be pure coincidence that McEnany seems to always butt heads with Black folks on CNN, like this time in 2017 when she was called out for her microaggressions toward Charles Blow, an opinion writer at the New York Times.
But for a clearer picture of the type of White House press secretary that journalists covering the Trump administration can expect from McEnany, all one has to do is take a quick look back in the not so distant past as the type of tweets her Twitter fingers were typing about someone who just so happened to be the first Black president of the United States. Scroll down for an up-close and personal look at how McEnany really feels. (We have screenshots if she goes back and deletes them…)
1. Questioning Obama’s religion
We all know what she was trying to do here.
2. Addressing Obama with disrespect
“Son”?
3. Questioning Obama’s Blackness
Identity politics at its worst.
