Kayleigh McEnany

After Mark Meadows replaced Mick Mulvaney as White House chief of staff in April 2020, Meadows' first personnel change was hiring McEnany as White House press secretary on April 7, 2020; which was officially announced the next day. Stephanie Grisham, who had served in the role and as White House communications director since June 2019, became Melania Trump's chief of staff and spokesperson.

In April 2020, McEnany defended Trump's assertion that the World Health Organization had shown a "clear bias towards China" and said that the WHO put Americans at risk by "repeating inaccurate claims peddled by China during the coronavirus pandemic" and "opposing the United States' life-saving travel restrictions."

On May 1, 2020, as part of her first public press briefing, McEnany was asked by an Associated Press reporter: "Will you pledge to never lie to us from that podium?" Without hesitation, McEnany replied: "I will never lie to you. You have my word on that." McEnany then proceeded to make a number of false claims in the same briefing. On the subject of Trump's responses to the coronavirus pandemic, she stated: "This president has always sided on the side of data". In response to allegations of Trump's sexual misconduct, McEnany said: "He has always told the truth".

Amidst 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 by CDC Director Robert Redfield. 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. 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."

In May 2020, McEnany defended Trump's baseless smears that a critical TV personality, Joe Scarborough, had a person murdered. McEnany offered no evidence in support of Trump's smears against Scarborough.

Despite Trump's well-documented history of false and misleading statements, in August 2019, McEnany told CNN's Chris Cuomo: "I don't believe the president has lied." Journalist Elizabeth Williamson opined "her defence of her boss — and her castigations of the press — appear to be unperturbed by (Trump's) shifting narratives, (his) breaks from logic and (his) flights of fantasy."

On August 5, 2017, McEnany left her position at CNN. The following day, she hosted a 90-second webcast, Real News Update on Trump's personal Facebook page. She praised the president throughout the segment, saying she had brought the "real news" to the American people.

In 2017, she responded to claims it was hypocritical of Trump to visit his golf course while president by mistakenly claiming that President Obama rushed off to a golf game after the 2002 beheading of Daniel Pearl. Obama was a state senator at the time of Pearl's murder. McEnany later apologized for the comment, noting that Obama went golfing after the 2014 murder of another journalist James Foley who was beheaded by ISIS in Syria. Obama, who was vacationing on Martha'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.

On August 7, 2017, the Republican National Committee (RNC) appointed McEnany as its national spokesperson. In 2017, as RNC spokeswoman, McEnany supported Trump amid a bipartisan backlash in response to the president's comments about a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which he suggested that white supremacists and counterprotesters shared blame for violence; in a Tweet, McEnany wrote that the Republican Party supported the president's "message of love and inclusiveness."

McEnany married Sean Gilmartin, a pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, in November 2017. The couple have one daughter, Blake, born in November 2019.

Early in her political career, she promoted birther conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama. During the 2016 election, she was initially not supportive of then-candidate Trump, calling his remarks about Mexican immigrants "racist." However, during the campaign, she became a staunchly pro-Trump commentator.

From there, McEnany enrolled at the University of Miami School of Law, before transferring to Harvard Law School. Huckabee said that "one of the reasons [McEnany] went on to law school was because she didn't see she was going to have an on-air opportunity at Fox anytime soon." At the Miami School of Law, McEnany was a recipient of the Bruce J. Winick Award for Excellence, a scholarship awarded to students in the top 1% of their class. She graduated from Harvard in 2016.

While in law school, McEnany appeared on CNN as a paid commentator and although not initially a supporter of Donald Trump, went on to support him in the 2016 presidential election. However, in early 2015, before becoming a Trump supporter, McEnany was highly critical of him, declaring on CNN and Fox 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." She began supporting Trump after receiving advice over cocktails from Michael Marcantonio, a fellow summer associate at a law firm and a Democrat. He told her “Donald Trump is going to be your nominee,” and 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”. According to The Guardian, she took this advice.

McEnany has been closely associated with the Republican Party since she was in college. She was critical of the Obama presidency, and in 2012 posted several tweets questioning Obama's birthplace, echoing the "birther" conspiracy theorist movement. In 2012, McEnany tweeted about Obama's half-brother Malik Obama, who lives in Kenya: "How I Met Your Brother — Never mind, forgot he's still in that hut in Kenya".

Kayleigh McEnany (born April 18, 1988) is an American political commentator and author who is currently serving as the 31st White House press secretary. McEnany began her media career as a producer for Huckabee on Fox News and later worked as a political analyst for CNN. In 2017, she was appointed national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and on April 7, 2020, was appointed as White House press secretary.