Former White House Press Secretary. Harvard Law JD. Compulsive liar. Now, Kayleigh McEnany can add “Fox News contributor” to her Twitter bio. On Tuesday, the right-wing news network officially announced that Trump’s chief propagandist will join its ranks as an on-air commentator.
"It is my distinct pleasure to welcome Kayleigh McEnany to the Fox family," said host Harris Faulkner, who announced the news. "We will be seeing much more of her."
What a perfect gig for McEnany to land, truly — and very likely her dream job, too. After graduating from Georgetown University in 2010, she spent three years as a producer on Fox News for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s show. Then, McEnany reportedly went to law school only because the network wouldn’t give her her own show. “I think one of the reasons that Kayleigh went on to law school was because she didn’t see she was going to have an on-air opportunity at Fox anytime soon,” Huckabee told The New York Times last year. She has also, of course, already appeared on Fox News multiple times, in the capacity of defending her then-boss, Donald Trump.
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McEnany’s new role is a seamless transition from what she’s done in Trumpworld, which is deflect from the truth with well-placed right-wing talking points. (And call anyone who challenges her, like reporters asking questions, an “activist,” apparently.) With her former boss still looming large as a figure in the Republican Party, as evidenced by his recent speech at CPAC, it will be interesting to see just to what lengths she will go to prop him up now that he’s no longer in the White House. As a commentator on CNN in 2015, she actually did criticize Trump during his initial presidential campaign, calling some of his comments “racist,” “hateful,” and “not the American way.” But after he won the election, she drastically changed her tune. As White House press secretary, she had moments that even Fox News seemed to disapprove of: The network cut away during a press conference she held in early November in which she pushed false claims of voter fraud after Trump lost the election.
It also remains to be seen just how far she’ll buy into current Republican rhetoric, which seems to be more and more extreme with each day. As her new colleagues Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and others embrace dangerous conspiracy theories like QAnon, will she go their way?
As much as we’d love to forget they exist, former Trumpers seem to keep joining Fox News. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, another of Trump’s former press secretaries, joined the network before leaving to focus on her run for Arkansas governor. Larry Kudlow, Trump's former economic director, just started hosting his own show on Fox Business Network. Of course, one solution to the problem of never wanting to see these people again is just to never watch Fox News. And, well — done!
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