White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has apparently got nothing to offer reporters besides relentless grandstanding on behalf of President Donald Trump’s most ridiculous nonsense. At a Wednesday press conference, as Coronavirus cases majorly rise around the country, she actually defended Trump’s insistence in an interview released earlier in the day that the Coronavirus might just disappear — which is, of course, astonishingly reality-disconnected, wishful thinking. When asked about the issue, just about all McEnany had was North Korea-style, lavish praise for the president.
After a reporter pointedly asked whether just hoping the virus will vanish is his Coronavirus response strategy, McEnany commented:
‘The president is confident that it will disappear. He’s confident that he’s put together a revolutionary, first-class team that is going to break through bureaucracy and get us a vaccine. He’s confident that that will lead us to a place where we won’t have COVID on our hands, and in fact, there is very pleasing news today from Pfizer and Biointech that showed positive results for their vaccines.’
What does McEnany’s explanation of Trump’s plan even mean? His team is going to “break through bureaucracy”? What — are they going to charge into a government health building with lightsabers and swords and demand they be given a vaccine immediately? Obviously, no, they’re not going to do that, but America doesn’t need any more of McEnany’s meaninglessly grandiose praise for Dear Leader Trump.
After a follow-up question, McEnany added:
‘We’re aware that there are embers in the country. We’re aware that there are places with rising cases, and that’s why Dr. Birx is on the ground and others. We’re continually assessing that. But one thing I would note is that when you do test more people, you do identify more cases, and that is rapidly ongoing. We’re testing more than a half a million a day.’
Watch below:
“The president is confident that it will disappear” — Kayleigh McEnany on Trump’s coronavirus plan pic.twitter.com/sHXaajVLHk
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2020
McEnany is displaying willfully brazen ignorance. The rise in cases around the country is not just because of a rise in the number of tests. In significant areas of the country, the rate of new cases is rising at a significantly sharper speed than the rate of new tests. The portion of those tests coming back positive is rising, and if the virus was contained, than as tests go up, the portion of tests coming back positive should go down.
At her Wednesday press conference, McEnany ended her latest display by belligerently claiming that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) “doesn’t want police officers,” which is incorrect. Ocasio-Cortez criticized the fact that a recent cut to the NYPD’s budget was boosted by moving school officer funding to the Department of Education. Her calls for real change rather than showy nonsense don’t suddenly make her some kind of conspirator against American greatness and security, as McEnany seems about an inch away from explicitly insisting.
McEnany ends the briefing by calling upon a staffer from ultra-sycophantic OAN who has been banned from covering the White House briefings as a reporter pic.twitter.com/ATMTmsXRVF
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2020
The Trump team has singled out Ocasio-Cortez for criticism in the past — the president himself once insisted that she should “go back” to where she came from. Ocasio-Cortez was born in the U.S. — it’s just racist vitriol from the president.
