Like her predecessors Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has had an adversarial relationship with the mainstream media, leading to testy exchanges. And on Tuesday, after a terse back-and-forth with Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, some right-wing critics accused the reporter of calling McEnany a “lying bitch” during a press briefing.
But video and the White House transcript of the conservation shows that Halkett never said that.
Halkett, originally from British Columbia in Western Canada, has been covering the White House for Al Jazeera’s English-language division since the late 1990s. At the press briefing, Halkett had a tense discussion with McEnany when the two briefly addressed voting by mail. McEnany told Halkett: “There are questions about mass mail-out voting, and I know you don’t want to hear them — which is why you talk over me.” Continue reading.