Tag Archives: press secretary

media news, national news

‘I will never lie to you’

Kayleigh McEnany made news this week by answering a direct question with a remarkably direct response.

She is the fourth White House press secretary to work in the Donald Trump administration. The first three were doozies. Sean Spicer opened his tenure by arguing with reporters over their coverage of the inaugural crowd that greeted Trump’s presidency; Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitted to lying at times to the media; Stephanie Grisham never held a White House press briefing.

Now we have McEnany, who comes to the administration after serving as a Trump apologist on the Fox News Channel.

A reporter at McEnany’s initial press briefing got right to the point: Will you pledge to always tell the truth?

“I will never lie to you,” she answered.

Well now. Given that she works for the Liar in Chief, and given that lying often is essential to protecting his political standing — which is most important of all to Donald Trump — the press secretary has issued a mighty tall promise.

We all must hold her accountable for it.

media news

Yes, the White House is at ‘war’ with the media

White House press secretaries have a singular mission, which is to convey the message of the president to the American public.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now performing that task to mixed reviews. Those who support Donald Trump’s agenda applaud her; those (of us) who don’t, well, we jeer her.

I’ll offer this jeer, therefore, to Sanders for saying that the White House is not “at war” with the media. Sure thing, Mme. Press Secretary.

Then, why does the president declare that the media are “the enemy of the American people”? Why does he keep insisting that media reports he finds objectionable come from what he refers to as “fake media”? Why does he disparage reporters individually, by name, along with their organizations?

Good grief, Sarah! The president declared war on the media long ago. The first press flack, Sean Spicer, fired the first barrage on Day One of the Trump administration when he challenged the media reporting of the size of the Trump inaugural crowd!

I am pretty certain the media believe they are in a state of “war” with the administration. Whether the White House’s “fine-tuned machine” believes it ignores what many of the rest of us realized long ago.

Sanders took part in a discussion of White House media relations with Mike McCurry, press secretary for the Clinton administration. McCurry, not surprisingly, took issue with Sanders’s assertion that there is no warfare taking place. He said the White House criticizes media reporting “every day,” which he considers to be a form of media war.

Read The Hill’s story here.

I am one of those former media guys who knows White House combat with the press when he sees it.

Thus, I believe Sarah Sanders is, um, quite wrong while she parrots the White House line on its relationship with the media.