Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Thursday knocked current press secretary Jen Psaki’s job performance during the daily White House press briefings.
McEnany appeared on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and discussed her time as press secretary and how she handled the briefings compared to Psaki.
Host Brian Kilmeade began by noting press secretaries always have “big binders” in front of them during the press briefings, but that McEnany had answers to reporters’ questions “almost every single time” and knew where reporters were going with their questions.
He then played a montage of video clips of Psaki not answering questions by saying she would “circle back,” or referring the reporter who asked the question to the department it pertained to. (RELATED: ‘I Hate To Disappoint Conservative Twitter’: Jen Psaki Continues To ‘Circle Back’ To Unanswered Press Questions)
“You can’t anticipate every question, but is that acceptable?” Kilmeade said, laughing, after playing the video. “It’s like you’re a crossing guard.”
“I’ve said before, and I mean it, I wish Jen Psaki all the best. It’s a very hard job. But that being said, you know, we took great pains in our administration to do hours and hours and hours of research beforehand, days sometimes,” McEnany responded.
She went on to describe that they would call each of the departments and their leaders to get the answers they needed for the briefings, and that she always knew where former President Donald Trump stood on issues.
“Unlike other press secretaries that maybe didn’t have walk-in privileges to the oval, I could walk in at any time … Before every press conference I would go in with a list of items that I thought the press would ask, and go through one by one. I always knew where his head was at, so I didn’t have to do a ton of circling back because President Trump gave a lot of access to me,” McEnany concluded.
“I have heard from people in the press room that they actually do eventually get back to the reporter and try to answer their question, either Jen Psaki or somebody from the communications team. Just not on camera,” host Steve Doocy added.