White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Tuesday leaned into chief of staff Mark Meadows’ off-handed admission earlier this week that the Trump administration is “not going to control” the COVID-19 pandemic as the President falsely claims that the country is “rounding the turn” amid surging cases.
When asked during an interview on Fox News Tuesday morning about Trump’s dismissal of COVID-19 — which includes his tweet griping about how “all the fake news media wants to talk about is COVID, COVID, COVID” — as cases surge in states that the President is traveling to, including Wisconsin and Nebraska, McEnany insisted that the President’s “plan is working” with therapeutics.
“Yes, he has shown us that plan with therapeutics and his plan is working,” McEnany said.
The White House press secretary then brought up, without evidence, that hospitalizations are at 6% and argued that is “a testament to the President’s therapeutics.” McEnany also baselessly claimed that those who are younger than 70 have a 99% survival rate from COVID-19, before adding that she was asymptomatic when she contracted COVID-19 earlier this month and “got through it.”
McEnany then pivoted to praising Trump for his supposedly “brilliant debate performance” against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who she knocked by repeating the Trumpian attack of the former VP “being locked in the basement” as part of his “COVID strategy.”
“The American people want freedom, they want to make choices for themselves. Get out, open their businesses, open their schools, open their churches. That’s what the President has done,” McEnany said. “Joe Biden will lock this country down, devastate the economy and that’s the alternative.”
McEnany’s remarks appear to echo much of what Meadows told CNN on Sunday that the Trump administration is “not going to control” the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 225,000 Americans and recently hit Vice President Mike Pence’s orbit in what appears to be a new COVID-19 outbreak in the White House.
While issuing his off-handed admission on COVID-19, Meadows also touted treatments for COVID-19 as a way to defend the Trump administration’s disastrous response to the pandemic.
“We are not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows said on CNN on Sunday morning. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.”
Watch McEnany’s remarks below:
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says Trump's plan with therapeutics is "working" pic.twitter.com/L0jFAJcbGm
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) October 27, 2020
Why does anyone give her air time? Aren’t the daily briefings enough to show that she never has anything to say that’s worth listening to?
So, that’s the fake news. Here’s the real news:
It was on Fox
It’s been interesting watching the anti-science playbook that’s been used by climate deniers fail with Covid. It’s easier to denounce science when it’s gradual and incremental. Harder to deny it when it’s all happening in a very concentrated period of time.
I’m guessing a few more hurricane, fire, and high heat seasons like the last few will start to change the minds of many of those skeptics.