Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace invited a panel to bash White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany because she dared to stand up to the opposition press. Between Wallace taking it personally and the Never-Trump editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg attacking her, it was like watching CNN.
Wallace’s chief complaint was that McEnany had taken the White House pool to task for ignoring and downplaying the revelations in the corrupt investigation of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and how the Russian collusion narrative was unraveling.
“I have to say that if Kayleigh McEnany had told Sam Donaldson and me what questions we should ask, that would not have gone well [for her],” Wallace bristled as he addressed Goldberg.
Goldberg took exception with former DNC chair Donna Brazile, who he said was “deferential to Kayleigh McEnany.” “I think her behavior is indefensible and grotesque,” Goldberg proclaimed against the Press Secretary. After struggling to get his analogy out, he decried McEnany as a “Twitter troll who goes on attack, doesn't actually care about doing the job they have.”
Adding: “And instead, wants to impress really an audience of one and make another part of official Washington another one of these essentially cable news and Twitter gladiatorial arenas. And it's a sign of the defining of deviancy down in our politics and it's only going to make things worse.”
But back in reality, the liberal media were the ones who had turned nearly every press briefing into “gladiatorial arenas” since day one of the Trump presidency. One just needed to look at how CNN’s Jim Acosta, Playboy’s Brian Karem, and the plethora of other so-called “journalists” who used the briefings to make themselves the news story.
Looking to rip McEnany even further, Wallace looked turned former Mitch McConnell chief of staff Josh Holmes and claimed she wasn’t doing the work of the people:
In the time we’ve got left, you know, the White House press secretary is always a complicated job, they work for the White House but they’re paid by taxpayers, they are public officials. And Kayleigh McEnany isn't acting like she is working for the public. She acts like she is what she used to be, which is: a spokesperson for the Trump campaign.
Wallace also repeatedly threw around how he used to be a White House correspondent back in the day with ridiculously biased Sam Donaldson. That being the case, Wallace should acknowledge the fact that every press secretary has acted as a spokesperson for the respective administration they work for.
Now, the argument can be made that McEnany's comments can be a little hot, but the hyperbolic rhetoric from Goldberg and Wallace was uncalled for.
Luckily, Holmes was the voice of reason and argued that “Kayleigh's doing a nice job.” He also told off the McEnany naysayers by noting:
[W]hat's missing from this conversation that we had this morning is the context by which she's making these statements. (…)The confrontational nature by which journalists approach the questioning is not really to obtain much information so much as to try to back them into a corner. And I think Kayleigh said I'm not going to play that game.
“And so yeah, it is completely different than what we’ve seen from years and years briefings from press secretaries, but I think it's reflective of the nature that we find ourselves in,” Holmes concluded.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
Fox News Sunday
May 24, 2020
9:48:49 a.m. Eastern(…)
CHRIS WALLACE: Jonah, first of all, it's not extraordinary. Unmasking is pretty routine. The effort by people in an administration to find out who a masked American person is. It happens in the Trump White House, it happened I think 16,000 times the year before last. What's a crime is leaking it but unmasking isn't. In addition, to which, I have to say that if Kayleigh McEnany had told Sam Donaldson and me what questions we should ask, that would not have gone well, Jonah.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Yeah look, it's nice to see Donna so deferential to Kayleigh McEnany. I think her behavior is indefensible and grotesque. And I think that what she has done he is -- there's this cliché in Washington that President Trump wants a Roy Cohn as DOJ -- as attorney general.
What Donald Trump wants in a press secretary is a Twitter troll who goes on attack, doesn't actually care about doing the job they have, and instead, wants to impress really an audience of one and make another part of official Washington another one of these essentially cable news and Twitter gladiatorial arenas. And it's a sign of the defining of deviancy down in our politics and it's only going to make things worse.
WALLACE: Jonah -- Josh, rather. In the time we’ve got left, you know, the White House press secretary is always a complicated job, they work for the White House but they’re paid by taxpayers, they are public officials. And Kayleigh McEnany isn't acting like she is working for the public. She acts like she is what she used to be, which is: a spokesperson for the Trump campaign.
JOSH HOLMES: Yeah look, Chris, I just disagree. I think Kayleigh's doing a nice job and what's missing from this conversation that we had this morning is the context by which she's making these statements. I think that any spokesperson in the Trump world, whether it's in the White House in the campaign, finds themselves under constant attack by the press.
The confrontational nature by which journalists approach the questioning is not really to obtain much information so much as to try to back them into a corner. And I think Kayleigh said I'm not going to play that game. And so yeah, it is completely different than what we’ve seen from years and years briefings from press secretaries, but I think it's reflective of the nature that we find ourselves in.
WALLACE: Let me just say, Sam Donaldson and me in the Reagan White House, we were pretty tough on the White House press secretaries and we never had our religious beliefs questioned or were lectured on what we should ask. Thank you, panel.
