White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday held her first White House press briefing since being appointed to the position in early April, wherein she assured reporters that she would "never lie" to the press.
McEnany is the fourth Press Secretary to hold the position during the Trump administration and wanted to reassure the media after her predecessors, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders and Sean Spicer, had routinely been accused of spinning and bending the truth during press briefings
McEnany's direct predecessor, Stephanie Grisham, did not hold any press briefings during her entire time as Press Secretary, leading to McEnany having to hold not only her first ever briefing as Press Secretary, but the first official White House press briefing in 417 days.
Early in the briefing, McEnany was asked by a reporter whether she pledged to never lie to them, to which she calmly replied "I will never lie to you,. You have my word on that."
McEnany added that she would be holding regular press briefings in the future, saying the White House will announce their briefing schedule soon.
Vox reporter Aaron Rupar was quick to accuse McEnany of lying, saying that within 15 minutes of her pledge to never lie, McEnany had already broken it.
"McEnany's first lie from the White House podium came in response to a question about comments Donald Trump made earlier in the day characterizing Tara Reade's sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden as "far more compelling" than the accusations made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. Asked to flesh out Trump's thinking, McEnany characterized the Kavanaugh allegations as "verifiably false."
The complaints against Kavanaugh, while not proven, were not found to be "verifiably false," and the FBI investigation into the matter deemed her allegations "credible."
When asked why she believed the sexual assualt allegations that former staffer, Tara Reade, leveled against Joe Biden more credible by McEnany than the 23 allegations by women who claim that President Trump has either harrassed or assaulted them, McEnany said that "the president has swiftly denied all of these allegations that were raised four years ago. He's always told the truth on these issues, he's denied them immediately."
McEnany's rationale for why Trump's denials of sexual assault are more convincing than Biden's is that "the president has swiftly denied all of these allegations that were raised four years ago. He's always told the truth on these issues." pic.twitter.com/dKKcmmEDpE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2020
However, several of the sexual misconduct allegations against President Trump were made in the years since he took office, including one very public allegation from Jewish-American journalist E. Jean Carroll who claimed in 2019 that Trump assaulted her in a department store in the mid-90s.
Joe Biden on Friday denied the allegations of sexual misconduct leveled at him by Reade, saying the incident had "never happened."
Rupar continued to criticize McEnany for misquoting FBI notes regarding disgraced former national security advisor to President Trump, Michael Flynn.
Flynn is currently serving a six month sentence in prison after pleading guilty for lying to the FBI during the federal investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 US elections.