Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany Really Hates it When the Press Try to Ask Her Questions

During a Wednesday afternoon exchange, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany mocked CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins for daring to ask a straightforward question about President Trump’s healthcare plan. In other words, McEnany was deeply perturbed by a reporter doing her job.

After an initial back and forth between the two over Trump’s comments about face masks at an ABC town hall the night before (Collins said Trump’s insistence that “some people say masks aren’t good” contradicts Centers for Disease Control creedo; McEnanay denied this), Collins asked about the president’s long overdue healthcare bill.

“The Chief of Staff said there is going to be [a healthcare plan] unveiled before the election, one that the president has been promising for over a year now,” Collins said. “But today on Capitol Hill, the three top medical experts in this administration said they have no idea of any kind of plan that’s being formulated. So who is it that’s working on the healthcare bill that’s going to be introduced before the election?

McEnany’s answer was vague, requiring her to read off of a list of prepared notes, rather than employing her usual off the dome style:

In aggregate, it’s going to be a very comprehensive strategy, one where we’re saving healthcare while Democrats are trying to take healthcare away, where we’re making healthcare better and cheaper, guaranteeing protections for people with pre-existing conditions, stopping surprise medical billing, increasing transparency, defending the right to keep your doctor and your plan, fighting lobbyists and special interests, and finding cures to diseases.

Aside from omitting the fact that Trump’s determination to end Obamacare would end protections for those with pre-existing conditions, this description is suspiciously vague for a healthcare plan that Trump claims is ready to be unveiled in a matter of weeks. But when Collins pushed for more specificity, McEnany pushed back, hard: “I’m not going to give you a readout of what our health care plan looks like and who’s working on it.”

She added, “If you want to know, come work here at the White House.”

Just so we’re all clear: President Trump’s healthcare plan is allegedly imminent (even though his words are relatively meaningless), but the reporter who asks for basic details is supposedly out of line. Got it, great. Normal bunch of people we’ve got here.

Considering the fact that this White House seems determined to hide the truth from the press and the people, this exasperating behavior makes a lot of sense.

President Trump shared an edited video with his 86 million Twitter followers early Wednesday morning depicting his Democratic contender Joe Biden playing NWA’s “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event.

“What is this all about?” Trump tweeted.

In reality, Biden was playing the Spanish-language song “Despacito” at a Florida campaign event aimed at Latinx voters… a choice that, understandably, prompted a lot of cringing on Twitter.

Still, for Trump to retweet a clearly edited video of Biden playing “Fuck the Police”—an obvious attempt to make Biden appear as an anti-cop politician when he is nothing of the sort—is irresponsible. People simply do not have the internet literacy to understand what is real what isn’t, which is probably why Twitter marked the Trump tweet as “manipulated media.”

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