Fox News announced Wednesday that former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany will be hosting her own weekend show, “Saturday In America.” The decision comes after years of McEnany prominently lying about a dizzying array of issues, further cementing Fox’s key role as a source of disinformation and falsehoods.
McEnany has worked at the network since 2021, following her stint in the Trump administration and at the Republican National Committee. Currently, McEnany serves as an on-air pundit for Fox and one of the co-hosts of the panel discussion program “Outnumbered.”
An example of McEnany’s blatant lies is her 2012 tweet saying, “How I Met Your Brother — Never mind, forgot he’s still in that hut in Kenya. #ObamaTVShows”
The comment came at the same time that President Donald Trump was pushing the discredited, racist “birther” conspiracy falsely alleging that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and not the United States.
And during a 2019 appearance on CNN, McEnany previewed her time in the spotlight by saying of Trump, “I don’t believe the president has lied.”
At that point in his presidency, Trump already made 16,241 false or misleading claims, as catalogued by the Washington Post.
“He doesn’t lie. The press lies,” she said in 2020. “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here, and isn’t it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama.”
Of course, the first COVID-19 cases had already been confirmed a month earlier.
After promising journalists at her first press briefing that she wouldn’t lie, McEnany spent almost her entire time in Trump’s administration spreading misinformation.
McEnany asserted in September 2020 that Trump “never downplayed the virus,” despite his repeated false assertions that COVID-19 had been contained, even bragging to Fox that his administration had “shut it down.” Tens of thousands of deaths followed.
Her claim was so removed from reality that the fact checking site PolitiFact rated her defense of Trump as “pants on fire.” In fact, in 10 fact checks rating her statements, the service only rated three as “mostly true” or “half true.” The remainder were categorized as “mostly false,” “false,” and “pants on fire.”
Another fact checking site, FactCheck.org, noted in May 2020 that McEnany had repeated a Russian talking point when discussing the Mueller investigation, which she claimed was a “complete and total exoneration of President Trump.”
The report, which specifically said that the investigation “does not exonerate him,” later formed the basis for many of the charges in Trump’s first impeachment.
During the 2020 election season, McEnany carried water for Trump by regurgitating his false attacks on mail-in voting, but it was later revealed that McEnany—like Trump—had voted by mail multiple times since 2010.
As results came in showing that Trump was losing the election to President Joe Biden, McEnany pushed false narratives, prematurely claiming that Trump won Pennsylvania, which he ultimately lost. She also falsely argued that there were “very real claims” of voter fraud being pursued by the Trump campaign and even promoted a bogus analysis alleging that it was improbable that Biden won four of the swing states that he did in fact win.
And McEnany continued her deception at Fox, where she claimed that nobody in Trump’s orbit brought up Vice President Kamala Harris’ race—something that Trump himself did. She also said that Trump didn’t put in place a Muslim ban during his presidency—which he infamously did. She even claimed that “you didn’t see crisis after crisis” during Trump’s presidency.
In May, as part of her pro-Trump advocacy McEnany said that CBS reporter Scott Pelley should have been arrested after criticizing Trump’s authoritarian stances during a commencement speech.
Fox has long positioned itself as a primary source of lies and dishonesty within the conservative movement. With the elevation of a serial liar like McEnany, the network continues to cement its reputation of spreading falsehoods.