As the former White House Press Secretary for President Trump, Kayleigh Mcenany could run laps around Jen Psaki. The current Press Secretary promised daily press briefings and when the nation needed them the most, she failed to show. “When the going get’s tough, the daily press briefing goes out the window”, McEnany said.
“Jen Psaki promised us a daily White House press briefing,” McEnany said Thursday. “There isn’t one today. There wasn’t one Monday. When the going gets tough, the daily press briefing that she promised goes out the window.”
What Americans were left with, McEnany noted, was a Pentagon press briefing. And still, she said, Press Secretary John Kirby couldn’t answer some of the most pressing questions. When asked how many American citizens were trapped in Afghanistan, Kirby admitted, “I don’t know.”
“And I don’t know how many Americans are in Afghanistan,” he said Wednesday. “That’s a question put to the State Department, not the Department of Defense. We don’t have that kind of granularity.”
His “best guess,” Kirby said Wednesday, is there is between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans near Kabul.
“When you are a press secretary at any entity, you anticipate whatever the questions will be,” McEnany said. “One of the most obvious questions is how many Americans are on the ground. He didn’t take up the time to pick up the phone and call Secretary of State Antony Blinken and get that number for us when you are the one place we are getting information from today, when there are nearly 15,000 American hostages on the ground?”
“And the Pentagon spokesperson could not pick up the phone and Jen Psaki won’t go to the podium to give us these very basic answers we deserve,” she continued.
McEnany faced multiple witch hunts during her time as Trump’s Press Sec and, unlike Psaki, she didn’t cherry-pick the press. Psaki has yet to face a full press briefing, thanks to COVID restrictions so I think it’s safe to say that her job has been considerably easier than McEnany’s was.
And she still failed to show up…