Meet Kayleigh McEnany: Trump’s new champion in war against media

Kayleigh McEnany, who studied at Oxford and Harvard, might as well have come out of Trumpland central casting.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a press briefing at the White House. Picture: AP

Kayleigh McEnany, US President Donald Trump’s latest press secretary, might as well have come out of Trumpland central casting. As with many in the inner circle, her loyalty is rock solid.

When a recording emerged about a month before the election of Mr Trump bragging about groping women, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it”, much of the Republican Party abandoned him. Ms McEnany did not waver: she said that the use of the word “let” implied “consent”. She also has something none of her peers can boast of: links to the top of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. As an undergraduate at Georgetown University in Washington, she took an exchange year at Oxford to study politics at St Edmund Hall.

Ms McEnany studied at Harvard and Oxford. Picture: AFP

The politics tutor under whom she studied from 2008 to 2009 was Nick Thomas-Symonds, who was made shadow home secretary two days before Ms McEnany’s appointment.

Mr Thomas-Symonds, 39, and Ms McEnany, 32, make for an unlikely duo. He is a biographer of Nye Bevan and Clement Attlee, respectively the architect of the NHS and the prime minister who shepherded it into being. Her book, The New American Revolution: the Making of a Populist Movement, includes interviews with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

She made her name on cable news as CNN’s token pro-Trump panellist. For two years Ms McEnany, who grew up in Florida, scrapped with liberals. She is proud of her year at St Edmund Hall. She mentions the university in her Twitter biography, alongside a reference to her favourite Bible verse and a nod to her husband, Sean Gilmartin, a baseball pitcher with whom she had a daughter in November.

So special to share this day with my daughter, Blake. From the podium to Marine One, it is an honor to serve the American people and share the great work of President @realDonaldTrump!

Thank you @alexbrandon for the photo & @johnrobertsFox for Blake’s first gaggle. pic.twitter.com/pZGv0vpVaF

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) May 2, 2020

“I’ve loved every moment of academia, particularly Oxford,” Ms McEnany, who went on to study law at Harvard, said in 2014. A tweet posted after she left Oxford complained, however, that there were no branches of Taco Bell among the dreaming spires.

Ms McEnany during her first press briefing. Picture: AP

It appears that the influence of her tutor was eclipsed by Ravi Zacharias, a preacher who had a study centre in the city. She wrote in 2013: “Oxford needed a Christian to respond to Richard Dawkins. Found that in Ravi, who has dismantled atheism.” Ms McEnany is now an evangelist for the president, trying to steer him through the coronavirus crisis.

She is the fourth person in just over three years to be given the task of selling Mr Trump. Ms McEnany gave her first briefing on Saturday morning (AEST), three weeks into the job.

Not all her opponents believe that she is bound to fail, though. She received unlikely backing this week from Van Jones, a former adviser to President Obama turned CNN commentator who mentored her early in her stint at the network.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows talks with Ms McEnany. Picture: AP

“I’m not trying to defend the messaging,” he told The New York Times. “But there’s very few people in either party who can accomplish what Kayleigh has accomplished. People keep taking her lightly and they keep regretting it.”

The Times