Kayleigh McEnany met with furious reaction after claiming she never lied as White House press spokesperson

McEnany says being a “woman of faith” and a mother prevented her from lying

Kayleigh McEnany’s proclamation that she did not lie during her tenure as press secretary under the Donald Trump administration has drawn furious backlash.

Ms McEnany, who served as a White House spokesperson from April 2020 to January 2021, said on Sunday that being a “woman of faith” and a mother prevented her from lying.

“As a woman of faith, as a mother of baby Blake, as a person who meticulously prepared at some of the world’s hardest institutions, I never lied,” she told an audience at Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit.

“I sourced my information. But that will never stop the press from calling you a liar,” she said as she went on to slam the media for the label.

“Our motto was this — ‘offense only,’” she told the crowd. “Because I knew what we were up against. Republicans always get the bad headlines, always get the false stories, always get the lies—if I can use that word — told by the press. There is one standard for Democrats and another for Republicans. And we must be on offence.”

Political commentators and critics were quick to respond to Ms McEnany’s claim of never lying to the press. “You’re now even lying about God,” wrote author Don Winslow.

“Lying about lying is one thing, but putting that on your baby is a whole new level of f***ery. Apparently she thinks lying is an opinion. (sic),” wrote a user.

“She does not have any relationship with the truth,” wrote another user.

However, this is not the first time that Ms McEnany made such a claim. During her first briefing in May 2020, she had promised a group of journalists the same thing. “I will never lie to you, you have my word on that.”

With several fact checks, her vow to the press has, however, been tested multiple times during her nine-month-long tenure.

In fact, according to PolitiFact, an American nonprofit fact-checking website, Ms McEnany statement’s were either “mostly false”, “false” and false accompanied with a “ridiculous claim” about 56 per cent of the time.

She was found to be “mostly” honest only 28 per cent of the times that the organisation had double-checked her claims. Meaning, though her statements were accurate, they needed “more clarification or additional information.”

However, the PolitiFact scorecard found that there were no instances when they fact-checked her and found her statement to be completely accurate with no significant information missing.