Kayleigh McEnany was Donald Trump's press secretary as well as one of his staunchest defenders. Apparently, Trump felt that McEnany had recently reported the wrong poll numbers, and Trump immediately blasted her, even calling her "milktoast" (yes, he misspelled milquetoast) for some reason.
Former President and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump today chastised his former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in a Truth Social post.
Trump accused McEnany of giving out the wrong poll numbers on Fox News in regard to the 2024 presidential primary race.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis recently announced his intention to seek the presidency and McEnany has made remarks that would make it appear that she is supportive of his bid in the past.
It appears that McEnany was potentially referencing a poll that was commissioned by American Greatness and shows that Trump is up by 25 percent on DeSantis in South Carolina.
Trump, however, appears to be disputing those numbers, referencing the Real Clear Politics average that recently showed him up 34 points overall in the primary race.
“Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on FoxNews. I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up,” Trump declared.
Trump continued, “While 25 is great, it’s not 34. She knew the number was corrected upwards by the group that did the poll.”
The whole thing reeks of typical Trumpian pettiness, and the incident highlights how Trump is a confusing mix of oversensitive about how he's perceived and utterly uncaring about how he's perceived. I suspect Trump has just lost another ally.
This makes one wonder whether The Donald would turn against someone like Kari Lake if, according to his narrow-minded perspective, she ever "stepped out of line."
This is a good example of what I don't like about Trump...he demands loyalty from his minions but doesn't demonstrate any from his end. If this issue with poll numbers even needed to be addressed, it should have been done internally. If Trump felt he had to go public, it could have been done in a more polite "everyone makes mistakes" kind of way.
ReplyDeleteKeep it up, Donnie, and you'll drive away those who would otherwise be avid supporters.
"Trump is a confusing mix of oversensitive about how he's perceived and utterly uncaring about how he's perceived."
ReplyDeleteI've honestly never got the impression that Trump doesn't care about how he's perceived. I think he cares very much about how he's perceived, including when that perception is negative. In other words, I think he cultivates himself as a villain to the left in order to score points with his base. But he's always thinking about how he's going to be perceived, always calculating how he can use those perceptions to his advantage. Mind you, I'm not one of those people who think Trump is playing 3D chess all the time. But when it comes to image and perception, that's basically his bread and butter. The worst thing for Trump would in fact be to not be perceived at all.
Charles,
ReplyDeleteBack in the early days, I used to say that: if you don't like Trump, the best thing to do is just to ignore him.
As for his caring/not caring: I think Trump is a lot like Korea as a whole. On the one hand, Koreans are fascinated by foreigners' opinions of the country and culture. On the other hand, Koreans do insensitive things like comedy in blackface or Hitler bars, which would seem to indicate that the culture, as a whole, really doesn't care what the world thinks of it. I think Trump maps onto that quite well: he's thin-skinned to a ridiculous extent, but he also says whatever the hell he wants, 3D chess or not, rational or not.
I don't know how often you travel over to Instapundit, if at all, but there's a huge schism happening there right now in the commentariat, with the fault line running cleanly between Trump and DeSantis. I mention this because, not long after I blogged about Kayleigh McEnany, Instapundit did, too, and everyone unified behind the opinion that Trump's dissing of McEnany was nonsensical and tactically stupid. For people who spend their days counting Trump's unforced errors, well, here's another one.
Fair enough. I've always thought of it as Trump just not having any tact--he still cares what people think about him, but he's also just used to doing things his own brash way. Which I guess is not that much different from what you're saying.
ReplyDeleteI'm rarely on Instapundit, although I have visited there before. Not surprising that there would be a unified opinion on this, though. It's hard to spin this as anything but a goof.