White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany scolded Jake Tapper on Sunday after the liberal CNN anchor called her a liar, noting that his “real problem” is that she calls out the mainstream media when it lies.
Tapper appeared on CNN’s hyperpartisan media program “Reliable Sources” to complain about the Trump administration. He was one of multiple CNN staffers who spent the hour airing grievances about the Trump administration’s treatment of the press during the widely mocked episode of the show.
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Along the way, Tapper insisted that he doesn’t have McEnany on his program because she “lies the way that, you know, most people breathe,” and therefore isn’t valuable to viewers.
“This is what she does, she tells lies all the time. She can’t acknowledge reality,” Tapper told CNN’s in-house media pundit Brian Stelter.
The Washington Examiner shared a clip of Tapper’s comments on social media, which caught the attention of McEnany, who quickly fired back.
“This is a therapy session for a broken network, and @jaketapper is lazy enough to participate by lobbing baseless personal attacks, with ZERO evidence,” McEnany wrote. “Jake’s real problem: I do not leak. I do not lie. But I DO call out the lies of the media (i.e. CNN Russia collusion hoax!)”
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CNN famously spent years pushing the “Russian collusion hoax,” while the “therapy session” mentioned by McEnany is presumably a reference to Stelter loading his show with six CNN staffers who spent an hour complaining about covering President Trump.
During the show, White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond even compared Trump supporters’ treatment of the media at rallies to a “blood sport” and Tapper referred to his own monologues as “Murrows,” a reference to famed journalist Edward R. Murrow.
McEnany has proven she has no issue calling out CNN staffers or any other members of the media with whom she disagrees.
She has feuded with CNN reporters, including Jim Acosta and Kaitlan Collins, on a regular basis and mocked Anderson Cooper this month after the anchor falsely claimed her husband, Sean Gilmartin, cheered her on during a White House briefing earlier in the day.
Cooper told viewers that Gilmartin shouted, “You crushed it, Kayleigh,” as she left the briefing room – but the press secretary easily debunked the claim.
“FAKE NEWS from @CNN that is disproven by the official White House Pool Report written by a reporter,” McEnany tweeted, referring to a report that is written by a specific journalist and distributed to all media members.
“WATCH @andersoncooper FALSELY claim my husband cheered for me at the White House Press Briefing,” she continued. “Read the pool report below noting it was actually a reporter cheering!”
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McEnany then shared an image of a pool report that indicated Gilmartin was not the person who shouted. The report mentioned that a maskless Gilmartin was in the room and “nearby was a reporter with First Class Fatherhood” who yelled out at the end of the briefing.
McEnany was previously a CNN contributor.