Kayleigh McEnany

Kayleigh McEnany (born April 18, 1988) is an American conservative political commentator, television personality, and writer who served the administration of Donald Trump as the 33rd White House press secretary from April 2020 to January 2021.

McEnany was born on April 18, 1988, in Tampa, Florida, and was raised in Tampa.

She is the daughter of commercial roofing company owner Michael and Leanne McEnany.

McEnany attended the Academy of the Holy Names, a private Catholic preparatory school in Tampa.

After graduating, she majored in international politics at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., and she studied abroad at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

While at Oxford, she was taught politics by future British Labour politician Nick Thomas-Symonds.

After graduating from Georgetown, McEnany spent three years as a producer on the Mike Huckabee Show.

McEnany attended the University of Miami School of Law for one year before transferring to Harvard Law School after completing her first (1L) year at the University of Miami.

At the Miami School of Law, McEnany was a recipient of the Bruce J. Winick Award for Excellence, a scholarship awarded to students in the top 1% of their class.

She was critical of the Obama presidency, and in 2012 posted several tweets questioning Barack Obama's birthplace, echoing the "birther" conspiracy theorist movement.

In 2012, McEnany tweeted about Obama's half-brother Malik Obama, who lives in Kenya: "How I Met Your Brother – Never mind, forgot he's still in that hut in Kenya".

McEnany later apologized for the comment, noting that Obama went golfing after the 2014 murder of another journalist, James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS in Syria.

Obama, who was vacationing on Martha's Vineyard at the time, admitted that he should have "anticipated the optics" of golfing immediately after making a press statement on Foley's death.

However, in early 2015, before becoming a Trump supporter, McEnany was highly critical of him, declaring on CNN and Fox Business that "Donald Trump has shown himself to be a showman" and it was "unfortunate" and "inauthentic" to call him a Republican.

McEnany called his comments about Mexican immigrants "racist".

According to Michael Marcantonio, a fellow summer associate at a law firm, she began supporting Trump after accepting Marcantonio's advice, which he gave to her over cocktails.

In an interview with the New York Times, Marcantonio recalled telling McEnany, "Donald Trump is going to be your nominee," and that if "a smart, young, blond Harvard graduate" wanted "to get on television and have a career as a political pundit, you would be wise to be an early backer."

Early in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, she was a critic of Donald Trump but over time became known as one of his staunchest defenders.

She graduated from Harvard in 2016.

As a college student, McEnany interned for several politicians, including Tom Gallagher, Adam Putnam and George W. Bush, and later worked in the White House Office of Communications, where she wrote media briefings.

While in law school, McEnany appeared on CNN as a paid commentator.

She supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

In 2017, she was appointed national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.

On August 5, 2017, McEnany left her position at CNN.

The following day, she hosted a 90-second webcast, Real News Update on Trump's personal Facebook page.

She praised Trump throughout the segment, saying she had brought the "real news" to the American people.

Former employer Mike Huckabee has called her a "meticulous researcher" and "extraordinarily prepared."

Her rapid occupational success was noted by Van Jones, CNN commentator and liberal activist who worked with her at CNN.

"I'm not trying to defend the messaging, but what I hope people can acknowledge is there's very few people in either party who can accomplish what Kayleigh has accomplished in such a short time... People keep taking her lightly, and they keep regretting it."

McEnany has been closely associated with the Republican Party since she was in college.

In 2017, she responded to claims it was hypocritical of Trump to visit his golf course while president by mistakenly claiming that Obama rushed off to a golf game after the 2002 beheading of Daniel Pearl.

Obama was a state senator at the time of Pearl's murder.

On August 7, 2017, the Republican National Committee (RNC) appointed McEnany as its national spokesperson.

In 2017, as RNC spokeswoman, McEnany supported Trump amid a bipartisan backlash in response to his comments about a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which he suggested that white supremacists and anti-racist counterprotesters shared blame for violence; in a tweet, McEnany wrote that the Republican Party supported Trump's "message of love and inclusiveness."

In August 2019, McEnany told CNN's Chris Cuomo: "I don't believe the president has lied."

She worked for the Trump 2020 presidential campaign as national press secretary from 2019 to 2020 and again as senior advisor from October 2020 to January 2021.

McEnany began her media career as a producer for Huckabee on Fox News.

She later worked as a commentator on CNN.

Following the Trump administration, she became an on-air contributor for Fox News and serves as a co-host of Outnumbered.

In addition to co-hosting Outnumbered she serves as a primary guest host for The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity, The Five and Fox & Friends.