I first saw Kayleigh McEnany on TV several years ago, when she was a CNN on-air commentator.
I assumed she was hired to bring conservative “balance” to their talk shows. I was immediately unimpressed. She seemed too young and inexperienced to know much about the world, too shallow to say anything worthwhile, and didn’t know what she was talking about. She came across as a partisan spewing canned talking points.
So I categorized her as a ninny, and turned off any program she was on.
It’s a bit surprising, given her credentials (which probably got her hired at CNN): Georgetown School of Foreign Service, Harvard Law, Oxford. She made top grades, and appears to have real smarts. (Bio here.) Not the kind of person you’d expect to be working as a partisan hack, which is what she does. Gotta wonder why she didn’t aspire to a diplomatic, academic, or law firm career.
And, frankly, her lack of grasp of important issues is annoying. More so than, say, someone who attended an Idaho community college and four different 4-year colleges in three states to scrape out a journalism degree, then became a sports reporter; you don’t expect much from somebody like that.
McEnany made minor news this week with this tweet:
(For background, go here.)
The problem is, that’s something McEnany herself did all the time; for example, “serving as White House press secretary at the same time she was a Trump 2020 campaign adviser” (see story here).
If she were a law firm lawyer with Hatch Act expertise advising a political party or public interest group, her criticism of Jen Psaki might have some gravitas. But she’s not. When all your work has been as a political operative, and then you criticize someone for doing something you did yourself, your credibility evaporates.
McEnany’s track record is full of such hypocrisy. And she has no track record other than a political operative spewing vapid talking points. As a Georgetown/Harvard/Oxford superachiever, she’s an empty shell. All that intelligence and learning got buried somewhere.
Nothing’s changed since I saw first her on TV years ago, B.T.,* except she’s a little older now (late 20s then; early 30s now)., She was then, and still is, a ninny.
Mary Trump, the Donald’s niece, is less polite about it:
* Before Trump
First I think the Hatch Act is probably unconstitutional. Still a White House press secretary should not be up at the podium asking for political contributions. [Edited comment.]
The Supreme Court upheld the Hatch Act in 1947 and 1973 (links to cases here). Psaki did not ask for political contributions; she simply stated that Biden “supports” Terry McAuliffe for governor of Virginia (details here).