The presidential election is over, and Joe Biden won. Although official certification of results in states around the country is still pending, these statements are not contestable — the election part of the process is over, and Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris earned millions more votes than Donald Trump. Nevertheless, Trump and his allies refuse to accept this basic reality. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he won the election, despite the fact that this claim just isn’t true. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has semi-transformed her duties into those of a Trump campaign adviser, and during a Thursday appearance on Fox & Friends, she tried to give the Trump team’s arguments legitimate standing. She failed.
McEnany didn’t even get basic facts right, it seems. She seemed to say that no other Republican has won the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but that claim is just not accurate. Republicans have won each one of those states numerous times. Why should people take her seriously if she stumbles over these utterly basic facts? At another point, she cited supposed evidence for concern that just didn’t hold up. She complained about the comparatively low rejection rate for mail-in ballots in this year’s election in some areas — but the numbers that she herself cited revealed an overall shift in rejection rates from 2016 to 2020 of under one percent.
After one of the co-hosts asked McEnany about the possibility of getting state legislatures to appoint electors who are more favorable to Donald Trump, no matter the popular vote totals from their states, McEnany didn’t rule out the possibility — although overruling the popular vote would be anti-democratic authoritarianism. She said, in part, as follows:
‘Constitutionally, that is an accurate argument. It is the state legislatures that choose the electors, but right now, they’re zeroed in completely on litigation, and the fact that in many of these cities, be it Detroit [or] be it Philadelphia, there have been issues for a long time of poll watchers being bullied… Finally, you have a president — who, because he won new states in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, that no other Republican has — who’s standing up for these forgotten men and women.’
Notably, the cities that McEnany singled out both have large Black populations. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) recently observed that the “narrative that is continually espoused by the Trump campaign and their allies in these lawsuits” is that “Black people are corrupt, Black people are incompetent and Black people can’t be trusted.” McEnany’s ridiculousness went on from there. At one point, after co-host Brian Kilmeade asked whether Trump had considered granting Biden access to intelligence briefings, McEnany said that the question would be “more for the White House” — which she is, quite literally, the chief spokesperson for. What are people supposed to do? Go ask the architecture?
Watch some of McEnany’s comments below:
"That would be a question more for the White House" — Kayleigh McEnany works for the White House pic.twitter.com/0MsK8qRK4E
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 12, 2020
