White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says she slammed Trump's 'racist' rhetoric in 2015 because she 'naively' watched CNN

• White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany blamed CNN and her own naiveté for somehow convincing her to call President Donald Trump's rhetoric about immigrants "racist" and "hateful" in 2015.
• "For about the first four weeks of the election, I was watching CNN and I was naively believing some of the headlines that I saw on CNN," she said. "I very quickly came around and supported the president."
• In newly-unearthed footage, McEnany passionately and repeatedly attacked then-candidate Trump, calling him "a showman" who didn't deserve a place in the Republican Party.
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During her press conference at the White House on Friday, Kayleigh McEnany, President Donald Trump's newly-installed White House press secretary, blamed CNN and her own naiveté for convincing her to call Trump's rhetoric about immigrants "racist" and "hateful" in 2015.

McEnany went on to say that she "very quickly" moved to Trump's side as he began to dominate the 2016 Republican primary election and effusively praised the president.

"For about the first four weeks of the election, I was watching CNN and I was naively believing some of the headlines that I saw on CNN," she said. "I very quickly came around and supported the president. In fact, CNN hired me."

She added, "I proudly supported this president, who I believe is one of the best presidents, if not the best president, this country will ever have."

McEnancy then quickly pivoted to attacking other CNN contributors and guests.

The new press secretary's defense flies in the face of the repeated attacks she leveled at Trump in 2015, when she called him "a showman" who didn't deserve a place in the Republican Party.

In television segments on CNN and Fox Business in 2015, unearthed and published by CNN on Thursday, McEnany passionately made the case that Trump wasn't a Republican and that he intentionally used inflammatory rhetoric to rile up the right-wing.

Shortly after Trump officially joined the presidential race in June 2015, McEnany argued that Trump's claim that Mexican immigrants are "rapists" was "racist."

"To me, a racist statement is a racist statement. I don't like what Donald Trump said," she said during an appearance on CNN, adding that the remarks were "derogatory" and "hateful."

McEnany argued that "mainstream Republican[s]" don't want to deport undocumented immigrants, a process she said is "not the American way," and that they instead support "some path to citizenship."

Trump has made deporting undocumented immigrants, building a border wall, and otherwise making a pathway to citizenship more difficult cornerstones of his presidency and rhetoric.

—andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 7, 2020

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