During her prime time “welcome” into the Fox News family, Lying Kayleigh McEnany told another of her whoppers, this time claiming she fulfilled her promise never to lie from the White House podium. Is her nose growing?
No Fox segment would be complete without conservatives whining about their eternal victimhood. In this case, the martyrdom was about just how unfairly poor Lying McEnany was treated as Donald Trump's press secretary compared to current Press Secretary Jen Psaki. And never mind how McEnany behaved like a vicious troll toward the press. But, oh, how unfair the world is to poor, misunderstood bullies like McEnany and her host last night, Lying Sean Hannity.
HANNITY: Do you think you were treated as the way [Psaki] is treated? Or were you treated differently?
MCENANY: Oh, I think it’s obvious to anyone who has watched the press briefings it was an entirely different treatment by the press. I mean, for one, she was asked what Joe Biden thought of the Antifa riots and you know her answer was that she hadn’t spoken to him. If I would have given an answer like that, it would have been unacceptable. The headlines would have been egregious and appalling.
Yeah, get out your hankies for these unfortunates who are, no doubt, crying all the way to the bank.
After they (temporarily) got over that conservative tragedy, the two discussed Jen Psaki’s willingness to go on Fox News – with a quick suggestion that President Joe Biden is hiding from the press and has yet to be held accountable to allegations of sexual harassment. As if Hannity has ever cared about the 26 women who have accused his beloved Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault.
McEnany probably couldn’t explain any of the allegations, except maybe the rape accusation by E. Jean Carroll that was made while Trump was in the White House and which has a related defamation case currently in the courts. But Lying McEnany “knows” they are all false.
MCENANY: I mean, if you think of the questions I was asked at the podium, I was asked about allegations of that nature, that were false allegations ,but allegations nonetheless against the president. I was asked if I would ever lie to the press. Um, I said no and I kept my word. I never did. We had footnotes to everything we ever said.
Actually, McEnany lied several times in that same, remarkably short press briefing. As I have previously reported, Fox’s own Neil Cavuto cut away from her November 9, 2020 press briefing, saying, “I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this,” as she baselessly accused Democrats of welcoming voter fraud and illegal voting.”
Media Matters wrote:
Much like her fellow Trump lackeys, McEnany “lies the way that most people breathe,” including in absurdly shameless moments like when she defended Trump’s indefensible lie that COVID-9 affects “virtually nobody,” or when she lied that Trump never downplayed the pandemic, despite a public tape of Trump doing exactly that at length. On virtually any topic, there are examples of McEnany bending, avoiding, or outright subverting the truth in absolute service to Trump -- exactly the outlook that is foundational to Fox News.
As if to prove that last point, Hannity closed by gushing, “You did a great job. We’re honored to have you here. Thank you so much for being with us and we’re, we’re looking forward to having you on a lot.”
You can watch Lying McEnany lie about her lies below, from the March 2, 2021 Hannity.
I wrote about her interview with Megyn Kelly last May and cited some of the glaring holes in her story: https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/megyn-kelly-grills-tara-reade-were-you
Vox has more on Reade’s allegations: https://www.vox.com/2020/5/7/21248713/tara-reade-joe-biden-sexual-assault-accusation
Although my post notes that Reade was represented by Douglas Wigdor, he withdrew from her case soon thereafter. He lasted only two weeks, though he claimed he still believed her. Law & Crime has more and some other lies she’s been caught in:
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/lawyer-doug-wigdor-drops-biden-accuser-tara-reade-as-a-client/
As for Newson, I live in CA and concur. They just want him out to have his scalp and because the repubs in CA cannot win anything anymore. They’re pissed off at losing and can’t find any way to win. Newson has done as good a job as anybody in this entire effed up mess that is COVID. There is no logic to the recall argument – it’s only anger and white grievance politics, fueled by FOX.
The current Right Wing obsession with allegations about Andrew Cuomo has nothing to do with a sudden concern from them about harassment. Nor does their obsession with the attempt to recall Gavin Newsome have anything to do with a sudden concern for Californians. The truth is far simpler: Angry Right Wingers simply want revenge for Trump losing the election. They’re hoping they can smear Cuomo out of office and recall Newsom.
Now, if there is any actual basis that shows harassment and worse from Cuomo, he will be held accountable. So far, he’s denied it. Perhaps something else will come from this that shows something impeachable. So far, it just looks like yet another mudclump that angry Right Wingers are trying to throw at him. If they can get his scalp, they can at least have that satisfying moment of “See! We got Cuomo!”
With Newsom, the Right is clearly thinking they can repeat 2003, when Darrell Issa led the effort to throw out Gray Davis so he could get the Governor’s Mansion for himself. (Of course, when Schwarzenegger seized the opportunity and elbowed Issa out of the way, Issa was reduced to a humiliating press appearance where he burst into tears over the failure of his master plan.) The current thinking is that they can toss Newsom out and replace him with another Republican. At this point, it isn’t clear that they’ll succeed. We’ll just have to see if that actually goes on a ballot and who actually shows up to vote. Many Californians are deeply unhappy with how things have gone during COVID and Newsom hurt himself with the French Laundry incident. But I don’t know that this means that the Right will get another scalp here.
And this is exactly what the recent NY Times article was discussing – the fact that fraudulent stories like Tara Reade’s completely undermine the point of #MeToo and give angry Right Wingers and misogynists a “whatabout” target when they are confronted. I’ll note that the NY Times article was actually fairly polite to Reade and just said her accounts were “full of inconsistencies”. The article did not get into all the blatant falsehoods in her stories, or into the shady way she promoted them. Reade is now trying to double down for some reason, which has allowed Fox News to promote her again. They’re clearly hoping people don’t remember something that was thoroughly debunked within the last 10 months.
I agree completely with Bemused. Anyone who is brave enough to come forward with an account of harassment and worse must be heard and not dismissed. But that doesn’t mean that every account is automatically true – it means that we take it seriously and if it doesn’t hold water, then it doesn’t hold water. Tara Reade’s story never held water, sadly. And in trying to smear Biden out of the 2020 campaign (and in being used as a proxy by pundits on the Left and Right), she caused damage that will be with us for some time.
That should not, however, lead the conclusion that each and every woman should be taken at her word. Some women have always used such accusations as a weapon and men will readily point to those few women who lied as an excuse for not believing all women.
Women like Tara Reade make it a lot more difficult for the real survivors to speak up.
To be extremely clear, Tara Reade made fraudulent statements about Biden last year in an effort to drive him out of the primary campaign and make way for Bernie Sanders. She stated that she’d been harassed by Biden when she worked in his Senate office, that she’d been told to wear suggestive clothes “because he likes your legs”, that she’d been told to serve drinks at a fundraising function and that she’d been fired for complaining about this behavior. (At another time, she said she quit – so even this story wasn’t consistent.) And when none of that got traction, she added to the story and suddenly announced that Biden had raped her in 1993.
When Reade’s story was examined, nearly every part of it was shown to be false or misrepresented. Biden’s staff and Biden himself denied her allegations and said they welcomed an investigation since it would prove his innocence of these claims. The most damaging evidence against Reade came from somewhere near 75 former Biden staffers from his Senate office, over 20 of which who had been in the office when Reade briefly worked there. They noted that Reade was actually criticized for wearing suggestive clothing and told in front of everyone to wear more professional attire. They noted that staffers were forbidden to serve drinks or do anything like that at fundraising functions, and that in any case, Biden enforced a rule in his office that the MEN were to serve coffee to the WOMEN and never the other way round. And they noted that Reade was dismissed for being unable to actually do her job competently – she was apparently unable to even sort the mail correctly. And that’s without getting into all the other implausibilities in her stories.
Sadly, there have been pundits both on the Right and on the Left who gave her unwarranted credibility, out of their hatred for Biden and their wish that Bernie Sanders be the 2020 nominee instead.
