Opinion
Kayleigh McEnany and the Women Who Do PR for White Supremacy
Her tactic is to carry water for the president at any cost
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Back during her CNN commentator days, I was once on the air with White House press secretary and Trump defender in chief Kayleigh McEnany. It was 2016, and we were both invited to be on a special CNN segment about women and politics.
Although I had seen McEnany on TV before, our real-life encounter stunned me. This was a few months before the 2016 election that put Trump in the White House, and I was blown away by her defense of then candidate Trump and how effectively, albeit delusionally, this woman was able to dismiss away the countless, and valid, sexual assault accusations against him.
McEnany would go on to become an even more ardent defender of Trump, eventually leaving her CNN gig to become the Republican National Committee (RNC) spokeswoman, after which she started her current job as White House press secretary. All along the way to Trump’s White House, McEnany sprinkled her path with very passionate and public defenses of the president.
For the longest time, McEnany’s almost unearthly ability to justify the worst of the president’s inexplicable words and actions — from sexual assault to his Muslim ban to his more recent “White power” video tweets — mesmerized me. I couldn’t figure out if McEnany was delusional, in love with Trump, or just being super-strategic about her career. Was this woman actually buying what she was selling? Or just a damn good saleswoman?
After a few months of watching her perform at the White House podium as the latest press secretary, I think I finally understand that what McEnany is doing for Trump is what White women do and have done for White supremacy for centuries: soften its image and provide its public relations (PR). Scholar and writer Jenn M. Jackson explains further in this passage:
One of the most prominent groups to participate in the preservation and purification of the failed white supremacist regime was the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894. The Daughters worked alongside organizations like the Klan to grow white supremacist frameworks in the South. They were integral in erecting statues and…
