00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary, good friend of mine, an exclusive conversation about her time in the White House.
00:00:07.000If you enjoy this interview and you want to see more of them, go to charliekirk.com slash support and support us.
00:00:13.000We talk about Turning Point USA throughout the episode.
00:00:15.000If you want to get involved with Turning Point, go to tpusa.com.
00:00:18.000Maybe you're a high school or college student.
00:00:20.000And if you're a young conservative woman, text this episode to your friends.
00:00:26.000It's an eye-opening episode about the inner workings of the White House, the double standards of the press, and quite honestly, the lack of morality that exists amongst the activist news corps.
00:01:01.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:09.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:02:39.000I was a second grader, like doing cheers for Bob Dole in the playground.
00:02:42.000So, you know, it was a bit of an oddity at second grade.
00:02:45.000And I never knew there were other women like me who loved politics and wasn't so much of an oddity, but I was just a young woman who was motivated by politics.
00:02:51.000And to see these young women who remind me of myself, it's just really cool.
00:02:54.000I wish I would have had this outlet back when I was young.
00:02:56.000Well, you're probably the most demanded speaker here.
00:03:00.000And so it is going to be packed and packed and packed.
00:03:03.000And we put you at the last day for a reason.
00:03:09.000There's a lot of things I want to explore with you.
00:03:10.000First, just tell our audience your story because it's pretty amazing from getting into politics and then becoming press secretary for the White House and not just press secretary, I don't know, during normal, boring times.
00:03:24.000No, you were press secretary during lockdowns, virus, Fauci, the race issue during every, I mean, you were press secretary during probably one of the most people would say chaotic moments in American history.
00:03:38.000Yeah, I think it is certainly the most chaotic, aberrational period in American history.
00:05:08.000So I had about a 24-hour period, but we got it done.
00:05:11.000So the normal succession to become press secretary is you work in kind of the White House press shop as deputy press secretary.
00:05:19.000This is not, I'm not that there's not anything normal or whatever.
00:05:22.000It's just that, and then you kind of see how these briefings work.
00:05:25.000But you came from the campaign, if I remember correctly, which was not necessarily low profile, lots of TV experience, you know, experience and all that.
00:05:53.000And, you know, yes, certainly that is the case that you're normally deputy press secretary and you kind of get some institutional knowledge.
00:06:00.000The only institutional knowledge I had was when I was an intern during the Bush era.
00:06:04.000And, you know, that wasn't really deep institutional knowledge.
00:06:07.000So there was a learning curve and I knew that coming into the job.
00:06:10.000But, you know, I knew I had the preparation.
00:06:35.000And the pummeling you get on those panels prepares you for the White House press briefing room, I think, more than any time being a deputy press secretary could.
00:07:07.000So they had the coronavirus task force briefings, but it had been 400 days since not my predecessor, Stephanie Grisham, but my predecessor before that, Sarah Sanders.
00:07:15.000So we had been through another press secretary, not had a briefing.
00:07:18.000And I took the podium for the first time after 400 days.
00:07:42.000Look, I mean, I just was yesterday or a few days ago, I was looking through some of the questions from my press briefings, and I just wanted to compare the two side by side, you know, a straight objective comparison.
00:07:52.000And the questions I found that were posed to the Biden administration were, how's the White House cat?
00:07:57.000Did the dog, was Biden's dog involved in a biting accident?
00:08:21.000I would just love. to have seen, which never would have happened, how the press would have reacted if Donald Trump Jr.'s text messages would have come out filled with the N-word.
00:08:31.000Do you think you would have gotten a question about that?
00:08:35.000And to watch the press bury this, just like they did the Hunter Biden story during the campaign, and to see how they were wrong about Lafayette Square, see how they were wrong.
00:08:44.000You know, they said the president cleared protesters with tear gas to take a photo.
00:09:18.000And it's too bad because so many Americans are just programmed to kind of live in this place of comfort of the information that's provided to them.
00:10:06.000And that's because we have an activist press that literally just cares about destroying not just Donald Trump, but his entire political movement.
00:10:14.000And so a lot of people then get cynical when they start to hear this kind of pattern.
00:11:55.000Instead, the line of questioning is: what is the current president's opinion on something that's happening in the state of New York?
00:12:02.000And so, you have some insight into the press, and I don't want you to get into intentions and all this.
00:12:05.000I know that's really hard because it's all speculation, but it seems as if that they really are activists, they're not journalists, and they're really in the business of personal destruction.
00:12:15.000Look, there are definitely a set of reporters in the press corps, and I could probably count them on one hand, maybe two, who are good reporters.
00:12:22.000And I've had one of them came up and, you know, in a hushed tone said to me on the tarmac, I come from the old school of journalism and kind of recognize that it has changed for the worse.
00:12:31.000And then you have people, and you're right to call them activists like Caitlin Collins, like Jim Acosta, who are activists.
00:12:39.000I said, Caitlin said to me, Hey, why didn't you call on me?
00:12:43.000And I yelled back, I don't call an activist because at a certain point, we've got to call out their activism, not engage in that kind of activism, because it's destructive when you are shouted down by a Playboy reporter in the back of the room at the end of each briefing.
00:12:56.000And where are the other reporters, the good reporters, saying, Hey, we're going to come together in the White House Correspondents Association and push out someone like the Playboy reporter who's shouting from the back of the room and is making us all look like buffoons.
00:13:10.000Look, can I tell you something that really bothers me?
00:13:12.000When good people get scheduled for cancellation for no reason, that's what's happened to Mike Lindell.
00:13:17.000I was just with Mike Lindell with 15,000 of my closest friends in Wisconsin, and Mike Lindell was hosting an entire event, and the media went after him like you wouldn't believe.
00:13:26.000And they're trying to take my pillow out of every single store.
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00:14:21.000So the way a lot of people view the media right now, our listeners, obviously, is they totally think it's a broken and corrupt institution.
00:14:29.000And I'm not really sure the right way to fix it, to be honest.
00:14:32.000And just because they seem that they have all this power and they want to use the power to keep themselves in charge, which is really dark and awful.
00:14:38.000And there's so many stories they could actually win awards if they actually went and investigated right now.
00:14:42.000But they decide they don't want to do that.
00:14:44.000Instead, I think there was a massive story recently on whether or not Donald Trump had his pants on backwards or forwards or the cicada that fell on Joe Biden's neck.
00:14:52.000These were the major stories of the last couple of last couple of days.
00:15:23.000But when you get to a point where big media colludes with big tech, that's where it becomes highly problematic.
00:15:29.000There was a poll out recently that I think it was one in six Biden voters would have changed their vote had they heard about the Hunter Biden story.
00:15:37.000They, you know, talk about influencing an election.
00:15:39.000There's simply no doubt that Twitter and big media and big tech all together influenced an election.
00:15:46.000And it was the most interfered with election in American history.
00:15:48.000And I mean, the fact you could suppress the New York Post story because we don't like what they have to say, even though it ended up being totally true.
00:15:55.000And then, oh, that was another lie, that this was somehow Russian intelligence.
00:16:21.000But the point to Russian disinformation, this is where it becomes so laughable that anyone with a brain cell can see through the antics of the press.
00:16:29.000You know, Politico, I believe it was, published 50 intelligence officials who said that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russia disinformation.
00:16:36.000Well, the average American says, I'm hearing about Russia an awful lot.
00:16:39.000I'm hearing about Russia collusion that didn't exist.
00:16:45.000So they're not even good at their job at avoiding reporting because they just point to Russia and people see through that, especially now in the wake of us knowing it is Hunter's laptop.
00:16:54.000Where even now some people are saying, well, do we truly know it's Hunter's laptop?
00:16:57.000I'm pretty sure if it has hundreds of pictures of Hunter, text messages of Hunter, emails of yes without close on emails from Hunter, it is indeed Hunter's laptop.
00:17:45.000It was as if they were sitting in the meeting with Trump, you know, in the Oval Office, and they would find out what happened quicker than even someone who's working in the EOB would.
00:17:53.000And there's no such pressure right now happening on the Biden White House.
00:18:08.000Yeah, but they did have one leak recently, which was really interesting.
00:18:11.000Kamala Harris, when she had that disastrous trip down to Guatemala and Mexico, there was interestingly, and I noticed it too, because you're right, there have been no leaks, but there was finally a leak of people within the White House saying, that was a weird trip.
00:18:50.000And that kind of internal dynamic actually hurt the Trump administration's ability to govern the country for the well-being of all the citizens.
00:18:57.000But the activist press doesn't care about any of that.
00:19:22.000And it occurred to me that should be the title because when I was going up to D.C., I was very nervous, almost in tears.
00:19:28.000And my dad said, Kaylee, you know, maybe you were made for such a time as this.
00:19:32.000And interestingly, a Democrat commentator sent me the exact same phrase.
00:19:36.000And it just stuck out in my head that, you know, God puts everyone in a certain place in a certain time for a reason and a purpose.
00:19:42.000I think I was at the podium for a reason, for a purpose in that time.
00:19:46.000And I think everyone who reads this book has a purpose they're designed to fulfill, and they just have to find it.
00:19:51.000So it'll be about my journey through the White House.
00:19:53.000There will be some cool behind the scenes moments, like when the president of the United States got COVID-19, the most serious threat to the presidency since Reagan was shot.
00:20:01.000I'll take you into those scenes, but it'll also be about my faith journey and how I leaned on Jesus Christ during those times.
00:20:22.000And so talk more about your faith and how important that was in the White House.
00:20:26.000We live in an increasingly secular society.
00:20:29.000I believe there's a massive spiritual battle happening in our country right now.
00:20:34.000And there's a lot of people that were praying for you and praying for your success.
00:20:39.000Talk about the role of your faith when you worked in the White House.
00:20:42.000You could certainly feel those prayers, I will say.
00:20:44.000You know, Sarah Sanders, who came before me, she used to tell me she's wonderful.
00:20:49.000She told me that before each press briefing, she would read her Jesus calling book, a devotional.
00:20:54.000And she, the day of my first press briefing, people didn't know this, but I literally, my mom and dad can attest, was in tears at two o'clock when I was supposed to take the podium because I was paralyzed with nervousness.
00:21:05.000But Sarah Sanders sent me a picture of her Jesus calling from two years prior to the day.
00:21:11.000And it was the perfect message about overcoming through faith in Christ.
00:21:15.000And I had complete serenity when I got to that podium.
00:21:19.000It was the prayers of so many Christians that I could feel.
00:21:22.000And you're exactly right about the spiritual battle playing out.
00:21:24.000And I saw each and every day, like when the president got COVID-19, you'll remember they dubbed the Amy Coney Barrett nomination a super spreader event.
00:21:33.000Well, what some people haven't pieced together is Franklin Graham was there that day.
00:21:37.000They were doing the big prayer march through Washington.
00:21:40.000And Franklin Graham and some of the greatest pastors of our time were in the White House meeting with the president.
00:21:44.000So you have COVID-19, the invisible enemy, lurking in this super spreader event, while you have these pastors who represent all things good and Christians praying through DC.
00:21:53.000And it was just such a clear juxtaposition of good being there, but evil lurking in our midst.
00:22:00.000But the good news is Christ can overcome all.
00:22:02.000And I get into that chapter by chapter.
00:23:05.000And then you also have to be able to answer the questions from the opposition.
00:23:12.000And then you have to then be able to know your stuff because if you quote one thing wrong, that becomes the story, not all the benefits from all that.
00:23:49.000Jim Acosta takes the science should not stand in the way, tweets it out as if to suggest I just said science doesn't matter.
00:23:55.000When in fact, I had footnoted my answer with all of this science.
00:23:58.000And even Jake Tapper had the audacity or I guess the courage to call him out.
00:24:03.000Not particularly a fan of Jake Tapper, but even Jake Tapper said, guys, we're taking her out of context here, which was a kind thing for him to do.
00:24:09.000But even when you do everything right, they will take a snippet, they will twist it for their own purposes and design.
00:24:36.000It's like really bizarre in the sense that it really doesn't exist anywhere else in the country.
00:24:40.000And you kind of just look at it like, oh, she's just kind of giving a speech.
00:24:43.000No, you have to understand it from her actual visual optical perspective.
00:24:47.000Every time you look up from that podium, you have 30 really like treacherous people that are staring at you, waiting for one thing.
00:24:56.000And you know that it's not just them, but they represent outlets that they could push a button and every single Apple device in the country gets an Apple news notification.
00:25:04.000Kaylee McEnany says this, this, and this.
00:25:07.000And then you kind of get off the podium, you get up the podium, that sliding door closes, and you ask your team, so how did I do?
00:25:47.000But sometimes they never quite got there.
00:25:48.000But all of this to say, the purpose of the press briefing is to bring news to the American people.
00:25:54.000And what was so sad to me during my time, there were children dying in the streets, like Secoria Turner and Legend Talafero.
00:26:00.000And we in the government were doing things to fight crime in the streets.
00:26:03.000And when I tried to bring that message, they didn't care.
00:26:05.000And when I talked about the police officers who have perished amid the riots, David Dorn, they didn't care.
00:26:11.000And I'm not saying they didn't care like they're not compassionate people, but they didn't care enough to write a story about it, to ask a question about it.
00:26:17.000And therein is the problem with the press.
00:26:19.000If your narrative, a child dying of crime in the streets, doesn't fit the left's narrative, it is just entirely ignored outside of local news.
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00:27:45.000So as if you didn't have enough on your plate, you also were the press secretary during the race stuff.
00:28:29.000I mean, I know when you speak and you have a lot of eyeballs on you, you got to be you got to be right in that strike zone.
00:28:34.000Walk us through kind of the crescendo of the day that got you to be where you were at 2 p.m. every day.
00:28:40.000So if we had a press briefing on a Monday, let's say, I would read through, I get hundreds of news alerts that come to my phone in my email, and I would read through every single news alert, every single headline, and make a list of topics.
00:28:51.000My two closest aides were Chad Gilmartin and Julia Hahn, and they would do the same.
00:29:00.000And we would sit down and come up with a list of topics, and we would run through every single potential hardest question we could be asked.
00:29:11.000And I would look through the draft binder, make notes, Google statistics, facts.
00:29:15.000I wanted to overwhelm them with information.
00:29:18.000And the next day, we'd start at maybe seven or eight, and we'd start running through the questions, reading through the binder, preparing, preparing, preparing.
00:29:26.000And then I'd go to the bathroom, oftentimes get on my knees and say a prayer.
00:29:30.000Or if I didn't do that, my team, we would all in my office, last thing we would do, we would get in a circle.
00:29:34.000And there's a guy named Ben Williamson who worked for the chief of staff.
00:29:36.000I started calling him Reverend Ben and then Pope Ben as the briefings got harder because he would always pray with us.
00:29:42.000And that was the last thing we did as a team before we walked out.
00:29:45.000It gave us a lot of peace in the tough moments.
00:29:48.000And so I hope everyone understands that because there's this idea that there's like 600 people prepping these things and there's these massive war rooms and there's like you research that and you do that and you research that as if you know you have kind of like the 24 CTU thing.
00:31:23.000And so can you just speak to kind of what some of the big issues are that you think we need to be focusing on to try to win back these majorities and also just try to win people over to the conservative message?
00:31:33.000Look, I think certainly the culture issues are very important.
00:31:36.000You know, people, I was just watching Fox and Friends, and they were talking about them getting rid of holidays and calling them days off in our school.
00:31:43.000You know, we're talking about not canceling people.
00:31:45.000They try to cancel anyone in Trump World.
00:31:48.000I mean, these kinds of issues, people realize the insanity of it.
00:31:52.000But in addition to that, I think really crime on the streets, the fact that crime is going up in all of these Democrat strongholds, the fact that, you know, a little boy, Aiden, loses his life and is shot in his car seat.
00:32:03.000And he says, Mommy, my tummy hurts, and is a victim of murder there.
00:32:54.000So the final thing for women out there that are listening either on radio or podcasting, it's harder than ever to be a young conservative woman out there.
00:33:01.000You are the role model for that, and for good reason, also a mother and a wife and a follower of God and Jesus.
00:33:10.000What advice, what are the big takeaways do you have for young conservative women in particular?
00:33:16.000I mean, number one, be bold when you speak, even if others don't, you know, stand up in applause in your classroom, plot in your classroom.
00:33:23.000You are speaking for a lot more people than you know.
00:33:25.000You know, there are silent professions of I support you, I support you on Harvard Law campus when I was there.
00:33:30.000So if you are courageous enough to speak up and be bold, others not only will follow you, but will appreciate your voice.
00:33:36.000But number two, don't if you want to be a mother and a wife, not every woman desires that, but if you have that on your heart, you don't have to sideline that for your career.