Editor’s note: What follows is an excerpt from Kayleigh McEnany’s new book “For Such a Time as This: My Faith Journey Through the White House and Beyond.” It can be purchased here.
Since I left the White House, there has been a whole lot of vindication. As it turns out, the press was wrong, and Trump was right on a whole host of issues. We now know that there was not verified intelligence detailing Russian bounties on the heads of US soldiers. We know that President Trump was correct in raising the possibility that the Wuhan Institute
of Virology might have been the origin of COVID-19. And we know that the press was wrong in reporting “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church.” I told the White House press corps all of these facts from the podium, but it didn’t stop them from running with the false reporting.
While there have been countless examples of erroneous reporting (now exposed), there has been very little accountability. No journalist lost their job. Very few corrections have been issued. There has not been a public reckoning by a major publication or outlet, apologizing for having misled their readers or viewers. No, there has just been silence. There has been silence and projection, as the press — ignoring its own lies — instead projects the label of “liar” onto others.
Completely disregarding their own track record, the press attacks Republicans with ad hominem smears — liar, racist, misogynist. For press secretaries, they tend to go with the “liar” moniker. They rely on so-called “fact”-checkers to make their case. These “fact”-checkers are little more than arms of the Democrat party, housed within left-wing outlets like the
Washington Post and PolitiFact. Just a cursory glance at these “fact”-checks will tell you all you need to know about their credibility.
A 2013 study of some of these “fact”-checkers found that Republicans are labeled dishonest at three times the rate of Democrats.“Fact” checking in the Trump era was no different. Tim Graham pointed out that, “Overall, from the start of 2019 through August 2020, Trump has gotten 197 Truth-O-Meter ratings, and Biden has only gotten 64,” with PolitiFact choosing to fact check the Republican president far more often than his Democrat opponent. It should come as no surprise that 79 percent of Trump’s ratings were “Mostly False or worse” while just 45 percent of Biden’s garnered the same designation. Interestingly, during this time period, we now know that Biden and the lapdog media deserved far more “Mostly False or worse” designations.
As the “fact”-checkers were skewering President Trump, the media was telling us that Russia had bounties on the heads of US soldiers, and Trump was doing nothing about it. Using this story, Biden accused President Trump of “betrayal.”
Fact check ten months later: FALSE
Also during this time, the media claimed President Trump gassed innocent protesters to clear the way for him to have a photo op at St. John’s Church holding a Bible. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi all seized on the story.
Fact check one year later: FALSE
The media was also telling the world that the Hunter Biden laptop story, containing damning details was mere “Russian disinformation.” Biden, unsurprisingly, picked up the talking point as well.
Fact check one year later: FALSE
Where were the fact-checks on these stories in real time? The sad truth is that the “fact”-checkers simply were not interested in dinging the Democrat nominee during a presidential election. As Dr. Edwin J. Feulner accurately observed, the “fact”-checking — when placed under scrutiny — begins to look more like “opinion-checking.” He goes on to pose this question: “Who checks the fact-checkers?” The next logical question becomes, “Who fact-checks the media?” The answer is no one.
…
The stories that the press failed to report accurately were stories of great consequence. If you had bought into the narratives set forth by the New York Times, CNN, and others, you believed that we had a commander in chief who refused to hold Russia accountable as they targeted US troops overseas. You believed we had a president callously calling our servicemen and women “losers” and “suckers.” And you believed that we had a leader willing to tear gas protesters just to take a smiling photograph. All of these things were untrue, and yet all of them were reported to the American
public. For all the media’s talk about Russia influencing our election, perhaps it’s time they look in the mirror.
Kayleigh McEnany served as White House press secretary during the Trump administration from April 2020 to January 2021.
