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Press Briefing by Kayleigh McEnany; May 28, 2020
Enough about that pesky old freedom of speech. Let's get to some real news. "Yes, Chanel."
Remember, kids, a clip can be "verbatim," but if the speed has been altered to make it appear that the speaker is impaired, that clip passes Kayleigh's truth test. "Verbatim" does not mean "unaltered." She went to Harvard Law; she knows just what she's saying.
PRESS BRIEFINGS
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany
Issued on: May 28, 2020
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
2:14 P.M. EDT
MS. MCENANY:
{snip}
And then, finally, before taking your questions, I wanted to address what has been going on on Twitter and with social media. I believe it is time to, quote, “get the facts” about Twitter and other social media platforms targeting their bias against President Trump and conservatives online.
If we were to judge the bias of Twitter and its top employees by their own words, the case would be an easy one to make. Twitter’s head of site integrity has tweeted that there are, quote, “actual Nazis” in the White House, and no fact-check label was ever applied to this absolutely outrageous, offensive, and false claim made against the White House and its employees.
But let’s judge Twitter based on their actions, not based on the words of its top employees. And its actions are no better. President Trump recently received a so-called “fact check” label for a tweet. It was a false fact check, an inaccurate fact check, but nevertheless, Twitter moved forward with it.
Dan Scavino, the Deputy Chief of Staff here, was the first user in the history of Twitter to receive a so-called, quote, “manipulated media” label for posting a video that played a verbatim clip. It is no coincidence that these two unbelievable interventions by Twitter were targeted against the President of the United States and one of the President’s top advisors. This is bias in action.
And while big tech is quick to censor the President, quick to censor some of his top employees, they — they are very reluctant, it seems, to label some of the actions by Chinese officials, some of the misinformation that has been spread by China. For example, to move off of Twitter and move to Google, they created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party, which blacklisted searches for human rights and allowed for easy surveillance.
Facebook and Twitter have both taken paid advertising that spread disinformation about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities. And Twitter has allowed Chinese officials to use its platforms to spread misinformation about the coronavirus, undermine the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and more.
And then, back in March, a Chinese official began spreading a conspiracy theory on Twitter — an egregious one — that our U.S. military was responsible for the spread of the coronavirus. And that tweet, that disinformation, it took all the way until today, when we raised concerns about it, to get a fact check.
So they appear to be very hastily eager to censor President Trump and some of his employees but a little reluctant when it comes to China. It’s a bit befuddling.
But no one believes in the First Amendment more than the President. The President will take action to ensure that big tech does not stifle free speech and that the rights of all Americans to speak, tweet, and post are protected.
And finally, I just want to note one other action of Twitter that I learned just before walking out here: that, on the Mueller report, their anti-Trump headlines were anti-Trump by a ratio of 76 to 1. That’s extraordinary. And it’s not just bias aimed at President Trump and his employees, it’s also aimed at everyday Americans. It’s aimed at the movie “Unplanned,” as Twitter suspended their account and then came up with an excuse in the aftermath.
And then, just another example that liberals are allowed to incite violence against the Covington kids who were, in the end, proven right and their video was taken out of context, and yet these individuals were led — were allowed by Twitter to incite violence. It’s very disturbing to see.
So those are some of the President’s concerns. And with that, I will take questions.
Jim. That’s a very nice tie, Jim, by the way.
Q Thank you very much.
MS. MCENANY: Yes.
Q Yesterday, the U.S. hit 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus. That happened at around 6 o’clock yesterday evening. It took until about nine in the morning for the President to recognize that on Twitter. What took him so long?
MS. MCENANY: Look, the President recognized that landmark before we even hit it. The President — that was — after all, it was the impetus behind him lowering the flag to half-staff. He did that for several days. And that was an acknowledgment of that number approaching, and he acknowledged it in a tweet this morning.
Q But we hit 100,000 yesterday evening, and it took 13 hours — some-odd hours to for him to recognize that and tweet
about it.
MS. MCENANY: And far in advance of that benchmark, as I noted, he lowered the flag to half-staff. The President has said — you know, you mention 100,000, but the President has said, “One death is too many.” He takes this very seriously. He said, before, this is the hardest part of his presidency; it’s something that no one wanted to see happen.
Q And, on Twitter, shouldn’t the President be fact-checked, especially this President who has made so many false and misleading statements that has put, you know, fact-checkers to work across the world? I mean, he’s uttered some 18,000 false or misleading statements, according to The Washington Post. If there’s any President out there who should be fact-checked — any political leader out there who should be fact- checked, isn’t it President Trump? And aren’t you trying to silence fact-checking by going after Twitter like this?
MS. MCENANY: Look, well, first I would say I disagree with all, if not almost all, of those assertions that you’re making there because, look, if you’re going to get into the fact-checking business —
Q The President doesn’t lie?
MS. MCENANY: — there’s no one that should be fact-checked more than the mainstream media that has been continually wrong about a number of things.
To give you a list of some of the most egregious ones: that ABC News, in December of 2017, falsely reported that Flynn would testify that the President directed him, during the campaign, to make contact with the Russians. That was false.
In 2017, your network, CNN, botched their WikiLeaks email exclusive and were forced to make on-air corrections.
CNN’s Jim Sciutto — another CNN one — dropped a fictional bombshell in 2018, July, claiming that Michael Cohen would tell federal investigators that the President knew of the Trump Tower meeting.
And there are many more — not to just put the onus on CNN there.
So if anyone needs to be fact-checked, I think it should be the media.
Q Kayleigh, there are news outlets that make mistakes from time to time. We own up to those mistakes. We corrected those mistakes.
MS. MCENANY: Not always. I have many that you guys haven’t owned up to I could get to.
Q We do, on a regular basis. The President never owns up to any of his false or misleading statements or outright lies.
You have pledged, in this briefing room, to never lie to the American people. Are you saying that the President of the United States has never lied to the public before?
MS. MCENANY: I’m around the President. His intent is always to give truthful information to the American people.
And you mentioned that the media apologizes for their mistruths. I mean, I’m sitting here looking at their headlines. The New York Times saying, “There Aren’t Enough Ventilators to Cope With the Coronavirus.” In fact, we had an excess of ventilators we’ve shipped around the world. Washington Post, “U.S. health system is showing why it’s not ready for a coronavirus pandemic.” We were ready.
There’s many more I could get to. I could — on the coronavirus specifically, I could spend the time going through these, but I don’t think that’s what the American people want to hear.
{snip}
Q Okay. And regarding the fact checking, the President clearly said things in these tweets that are not true. Do you not acknowledge that?
MS. MCENANY: No, I don’t acknowledge that. He —
Q He said, for instance, that, “The Governor of California is sending out ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” That is not true. California is sending out absentee ballots to registered voters, not to “anybody.”
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, so —
Q That’s just not true.
MS. MCENANY: So let me address this in detail, on the issue of ballots. And I’m going to lay out some of the President’s concerns. And, in that, I will get to the California example.
First, I want to note that there was a Pew study done that shows there is plenty of reason to believe that mass — in the mass mail-in system, that there is fraud. They estimated that approximately 24 million — one out of every eight voters registered in the U.S. — are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate. So these are people who are on voter registrations that have not been maintained, that have not been kept up. More than 1.8 million have been deceased, they estimated.
And then, when you look and drill down into some of the examples that we’ve seen in states, Nevada just — I read about this last week and it just really struck me as a perfect example of what the President is concerned about with mail-in ballots and the fraud that can be inherent in that. There were ballots — because Nevada mass mailed them out to voter rolls that were piling up in apartment complexes — outside of apartment complexes in Las Vegas, sitting around in trash cans. This is how we’re protecting ballots? It’s extraordinary.
Postal workers — one 36-year-old — a 36-year veteran carrier said she’s never seen anything like these influx of absentee ballots. All of the people had moved or died when she set out to deliver on her first delivery route. And this happened just recently. You can go read the articles from last week. She found 65 ballots of people who had moved or died. On her second carry, 100. And then as the week progressed, thousands just sitting in crates. I mean, this is extraordinary. This is not how we should be protecting U.S. ballots.
In South Carolina, Dems — the Democrats sued to force a rush transfer of mail-in voting. And this happened again recently; I think it was last week. And mail-in ballots for South Carolina turned up in Maryland.
There’s another example of 700 suspicious mail-in ballots in Dallas and an individual charged with second-degree felony, illegal voting. And he’s accused of visiting a woman in April to collect her blank absentee ballot, filling it out and forging her signature. I mean, this is extraordinary.
And then you go on: There’s a New Jersey example of over 3,000 ballots that were seemingly set aside. And going to California — you mentioned — California is one of those states that’s notorious for ballot harvesting. And in 2018, the registrar in Orange County said that they reported that his office had people dropping off maybe 100 or 200 ballots at a time. And somehow, in LA County, 112 percent of LA County is registered to vote.
So the problem is this: When you don’t clean your register and you send out your entire register, auto-send out these ballots, they end up in trash cans, like in Nevada. they are subject to fraud, and that is extremely troubling.
Q So — but, Kayleigh, I asked you a very specific question. The President said that California was sending out ballots to everybody in the state. That is a false statement. It is not correct. Will the President correct that, acknowledge what he said is simply not true?
MS. MCENANY: There is an executive order that was put into place recently by Gavin Newsom that would auto-send to voter rolls, and that would lead to what the President was suggesting.
Yes.
Q No, but to — excuse me, Kayleigh, to registered voters, those — it’s not to everybody; it’s to registered voters.
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, to everyone, including —
Q It is — it is —
MS. MCENANY: — dead people on the voter rolls; including to the mysterious 112 percent in LA County. That’s — that is does not just everyone. That’s everyone plus an extra 12 percent. And if you’re not concerned about that, I’m sorry.
I mean, the media is very concerned about the security of our elections, but when it comes to mail-in ballots, all of a sudden, the concern for election security just melts away.
Q But, Kayleigh, you yourself have voted by mail.
Q Kayleigh —
MS. MCENANY: Yes. Brian.
Q Thank you very much. Research — on mail-in ballots — research has shown that, one, it doesn’t benefit either party. It increases voter participation. Secretaries of state of both parties are still pursuing it. And fraud is — is not widespread.
And so why is the President continuing to tweet about this and to give the impression that there’s widespread fraud in the use of mail-in ballots when he himself used a mail-in ballot? The big question is: Some are concerned that the President may be laying the groundwork to cast doubt on the election. Is that what he’s doing by bringing this up?
MS. MCENANY: Well, I appreciate you bringing up this question and, specifically, the component about the President using mail-in ballots.
There’s an important distinction, and I think it’s lost upon a lot of people, but it’s important to make: is that the President is okay with mail-in voting so long as you have a reason. He’s not okay with mass mail-in voting where you auto-send, as I said, to all of these voter rolls with people who are dead, that are subject to fraud. That is the case.
We saw — I listed off for you — I think three of the five examples I gave you were from just this week and last week. So this does happen. And —
Q Well, then why is it that research has shown –Stanford University did a research study that showed that there wasn’t widespread fraud in these vote-by-mail and that it didn’t benefit either party and increased voter participation. So why would the President be against that?
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, it is subject to both parties. This can hurt both parties. I would note that a bipartisan commission — led in part by President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat — concluded that mail-in ballots, quote, “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
So moving the entire country to that system doesn’t make sense, and doing so in a hurried fashion ahead of November — just go look at the Democrat Iowa caucus and how it worked out when they tried to move to a new system.
And then, finally —
Q Is the President trying to lay groundwork to cast doubt on the results of the election in November?
MS. MCENANY: Finally, I —
Q Is he laying groundwork to try to cast doubt on the results of the election in November?
MS. MCENANY: No, he’s certainly not doing that. And I would finally note there’s an additional concern that was very well laid out by the Wall Street Journal editorial board that, in 2016, minorities and first-time voters were more likely to have mail-in ballots thrown out. So that is another troubling concern. In fact, 319,000 of those total votes were rejected.
Yes.
Q Thank you. Back in November, President Trump went up to Walter Reed, said it was for phase one of his physical. When does he plan to complete phase two and release the results to the public?
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, I don’t have an update on the physical, but because you asked that, I’ll specifically inquire about that today and try to get back to you.
Q But is he planning to do it?
MS. MCENANY: You what?
Q He does plan to do it?
MS. MCENANY: Yes, he does. Yes.
{snip}
Chanel.
Q Thank you, Kayleigh. If Joe Scarborough were innocent, couldn’t he sue the President for defamation? And then, in turn, couldn’t President Trump’s attorneys immediately depose Joe Scarborough for — and allow him to go under oath and explain how, you know, this 28-year-old woman was found dead by his desk with multiple skull fractures? Would the President welcome a defamation suit from Joe Scarborough?
MS. MCENANY: So, on that, I would just refer you back to some of my previous comments that the audio on the Don Imus show was very disturbing, where there was a lot of laughing and joking about this matter. That certainly is not a laughing and joking matter.
Q I mean, do you think that Scarborough has grounds to do so?
MS. MCENANY: So, I have no further comments other than to just point back to the Don Imus audio.
{snip}
Q Yes, Kayleigh. Thank you. You yourself have been able to vote by mail several times. Do you think anyone with health concerns — who has health concerns about going to the polls — should have that same convenience, that right?
MS. MCENANY: So what I would note again is the distinction between absentee voting and having a reason, and mass mail-out voting, where ballots are sent in a widespread fashion to people who are dead but on voting rolls, and those ballots end up in trash cans. That’s a state-by-state consideration. I’ll leave it to states to determine what is a valid reason.
But there are — you know, if you’re an elderly person who is unable to get to —
Q But the states are doing this out of health considerations for a lot of their residents. And if they want to pursue that track, is there anything wrong with that?
MS. MCENANY: Again, I mean, you’re asking — I assume you’re asking with relation to the pandemic that’s going on.
Q Yes.
MS. MCENANY: None of us know where we’re going to be in November; I’d first note that. We don’t have a crystal ball. But what I would say is that there are real concerns when you don’t do in-person voting. And South Carolina is a great example, where Democrats literally sued to force rush mail-in voting. And what happened? You had ballots from South Carolina ending up in Baltimore. That is not a tenable system.
And as states start to reopen and we see people out at beaches in Florida and we’re not seeing these mass spikes, and we see people safely going to restaurants and social distancing and washing their hands and doing all the wonderful mitigation techniques put forward by our experts, they’re reopening society and they’re doing so safely.
And I think there’s a way to continue our great civic duty of showing up and voting in a way that is safe. In the same way it’s safe to eat at a restaurant, it’s safe to go to a beach, we can vote in a safe fashion. And I think that’s something that is good and to be celebrated as we head to November.
All right, I think I took everyone’s question.
Q But if there’s a second wave, people should be able to vote —
MS. MCENANY: Thank you so much guys.
END 2:43 P.M. EDT
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany
Issued on: May 28, 2020
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
2:14 P.M. EDT
MS. MCENANY:
{snip}
And then, finally, before taking your questions, I wanted to address what has been going on on Twitter and with social media. I believe it is time to, quote, “get the facts” about Twitter and other social media platforms targeting their bias against President Trump and conservatives online.
If we were to judge the bias of Twitter and its top employees by their own words, the case would be an easy one to make. Twitter’s head of site integrity has tweeted that there are, quote, “actual Nazis” in the White House, and no fact-check label was ever applied to this absolutely outrageous, offensive, and false claim made against the White House and its employees.
But let’s judge Twitter based on their actions, not based on the words of its top employees. And its actions are no better. President Trump recently received a so-called “fact check” label for a tweet. It was a false fact check, an inaccurate fact check, but nevertheless, Twitter moved forward with it.
Dan Scavino, the Deputy Chief of Staff here, was the first user in the history of Twitter to receive a so-called, quote, “manipulated media” label for posting a video that played a verbatim clip. It is no coincidence that these two unbelievable interventions by Twitter were targeted against the President of the United States and one of the President’s top advisors. This is bias in action.
And while big tech is quick to censor the President, quick to censor some of his top employees, they — they are very reluctant, it seems, to label some of the actions by Chinese officials, some of the misinformation that has been spread by China. For example, to move off of Twitter and move to Google, they created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party, which blacklisted searches for human rights and allowed for easy surveillance.
Facebook and Twitter have both taken paid advertising that spread disinformation about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities. And Twitter has allowed Chinese officials to use its platforms to spread misinformation about the coronavirus, undermine the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and more.
And then, back in March, a Chinese official began spreading a conspiracy theory on Twitter — an egregious one — that our U.S. military was responsible for the spread of the coronavirus. And that tweet, that disinformation, it took all the way until today, when we raised concerns about it, to get a fact check.
So they appear to be very hastily eager to censor President Trump and some of his employees but a little reluctant when it comes to China. It’s a bit befuddling.
But no one believes in the First Amendment more than the President. The President will take action to ensure that big tech does not stifle free speech and that the rights of all Americans to speak, tweet, and post are protected.
And finally, I just want to note one other action of Twitter that I learned just before walking out here: that, on the Mueller report, their anti-Trump headlines were anti-Trump by a ratio of 76 to 1. That’s extraordinary. And it’s not just bias aimed at President Trump and his employees, it’s also aimed at everyday Americans. It’s aimed at the movie “Unplanned,” as Twitter suspended their account and then came up with an excuse in the aftermath.
And then, just another example that liberals are allowed to incite violence against the Covington kids who were, in the end, proven right and their video was taken out of context, and yet these individuals were led — were allowed by Twitter to incite violence. It’s very disturbing to see.
So those are some of the President’s concerns. And with that, I will take questions.
Jim. That’s a very nice tie, Jim, by the way.
Q Thank you very much.
MS. MCENANY: Yes.
Q Yesterday, the U.S. hit 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus. That happened at around 6 o’clock yesterday evening. It took until about nine in the morning for the President to recognize that on Twitter. What took him so long?
MS. MCENANY: Look, the President recognized that landmark before we even hit it. The President — that was — after all, it was the impetus behind him lowering the flag to half-staff. He did that for several days. And that was an acknowledgment of that number approaching, and he acknowledged it in a tweet this morning.
Q But we hit 100,000 yesterday evening, and it took 13 hours — some-odd hours to for him to recognize that and tweet
about it.
MS. MCENANY: And far in advance of that benchmark, as I noted, he lowered the flag to half-staff. The President has said — you know, you mention 100,000, but the President has said, “One death is too many.” He takes this very seriously. He said, before, this is the hardest part of his presidency; it’s something that no one wanted to see happen.
Q And, on Twitter, shouldn’t the President be fact-checked, especially this President who has made so many false and misleading statements that has put, you know, fact-checkers to work across the world? I mean, he’s uttered some 18,000 false or misleading statements, according to The Washington Post. If there’s any President out there who should be fact-checked — any political leader out there who should be fact- checked, isn’t it President Trump? And aren’t you trying to silence fact-checking by going after Twitter like this?
MS. MCENANY: Look, well, first I would say I disagree with all, if not almost all, of those assertions that you’re making there because, look, if you’re going to get into the fact-checking business —
Q The President doesn’t lie?
MS. MCENANY: — there’s no one that should be fact-checked more than the mainstream media that has been continually wrong about a number of things.
To give you a list of some of the most egregious ones: that ABC News, in December of 2017, falsely reported that Flynn would testify that the President directed him, during the campaign, to make contact with the Russians. That was false.
In 2017, your network, CNN, botched their WikiLeaks email exclusive and were forced to make on-air corrections.
CNN’s Jim Sciutto — another CNN one — dropped a fictional bombshell in 2018, July, claiming that Michael Cohen would tell federal investigators that the President knew of the Trump Tower meeting.
And there are many more — not to just put the onus on CNN there.
So if anyone needs to be fact-checked, I think it should be the media.
Q Kayleigh, there are news outlets that make mistakes from time to time. We own up to those mistakes. We corrected those mistakes.
MS. MCENANY: Not always. I have many that you guys haven’t owned up to I could get to.
Q We do, on a regular basis. The President never owns up to any of his false or misleading statements or outright lies.
You have pledged, in this briefing room, to never lie to the American people. Are you saying that the President of the United States has never lied to the public before?
MS. MCENANY: I’m around the President. His intent is always to give truthful information to the American people.
And you mentioned that the media apologizes for their mistruths. I mean, I’m sitting here looking at their headlines. The New York Times saying, “There Aren’t Enough Ventilators to Cope With the Coronavirus.” In fact, we had an excess of ventilators we’ve shipped around the world. Washington Post, “U.S. health system is showing why it’s not ready for a coronavirus pandemic.” We were ready.
There’s many more I could get to. I could — on the coronavirus specifically, I could spend the time going through these, but I don’t think that’s what the American people want to hear.
{snip}
Q Okay. And regarding the fact checking, the President clearly said things in these tweets that are not true. Do you not acknowledge that?
MS. MCENANY: No, I don’t acknowledge that. He —
Q He said, for instance, that, “The Governor of California is sending out ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” That is not true. California is sending out absentee ballots to registered voters, not to “anybody.”
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, so —
Q That’s just not true.
MS. MCENANY: So let me address this in detail, on the issue of ballots. And I’m going to lay out some of the President’s concerns. And, in that, I will get to the California example.
First, I want to note that there was a Pew study done that shows there is plenty of reason to believe that mass — in the mass mail-in system, that there is fraud. They estimated that approximately 24 million — one out of every eight voters registered in the U.S. — are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate. So these are people who are on voter registrations that have not been maintained, that have not been kept up. More than 1.8 million have been deceased, they estimated.
And then, when you look and drill down into some of the examples that we’ve seen in states, Nevada just — I read about this last week and it just really struck me as a perfect example of what the President is concerned about with mail-in ballots and the fraud that can be inherent in that. There were ballots — because Nevada mass mailed them out to voter rolls that were piling up in apartment complexes — outside of apartment complexes in Las Vegas, sitting around in trash cans. This is how we’re protecting ballots? It’s extraordinary.
Postal workers — one 36-year-old — a 36-year veteran carrier said she’s never seen anything like these influx of absentee ballots. All of the people had moved or died when she set out to deliver on her first delivery route. And this happened just recently. You can go read the articles from last week. She found 65 ballots of people who had moved or died. On her second carry, 100. And then as the week progressed, thousands just sitting in crates. I mean, this is extraordinary. This is not how we should be protecting U.S. ballots.
In South Carolina, Dems — the Democrats sued to force a rush transfer of mail-in voting. And this happened again recently; I think it was last week. And mail-in ballots for South Carolina turned up in Maryland.
There’s another example of 700 suspicious mail-in ballots in Dallas and an individual charged with second-degree felony, illegal voting. And he’s accused of visiting a woman in April to collect her blank absentee ballot, filling it out and forging her signature. I mean, this is extraordinary.
And then you go on: There’s a New Jersey example of over 3,000 ballots that were seemingly set aside. And going to California — you mentioned — California is one of those states that’s notorious for ballot harvesting. And in 2018, the registrar in Orange County said that they reported that his office had people dropping off maybe 100 or 200 ballots at a time. And somehow, in LA County, 112 percent of LA County is registered to vote.
So the problem is this: When you don’t clean your register and you send out your entire register, auto-send out these ballots, they end up in trash cans, like in Nevada. they are subject to fraud, and that is extremely troubling.
Q So — but, Kayleigh, I asked you a very specific question. The President said that California was sending out ballots to everybody in the state. That is a false statement. It is not correct. Will the President correct that, acknowledge what he said is simply not true?
MS. MCENANY: There is an executive order that was put into place recently by Gavin Newsom that would auto-send to voter rolls, and that would lead to what the President was suggesting.
Yes.
Q No, but to — excuse me, Kayleigh, to registered voters, those — it’s not to everybody; it’s to registered voters.
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, to everyone, including —
Q It is — it is —
MS. MCENANY: — dead people on the voter rolls; including to the mysterious 112 percent in LA County. That’s — that is does not just everyone. That’s everyone plus an extra 12 percent. And if you’re not concerned about that, I’m sorry.
I mean, the media is very concerned about the security of our elections, but when it comes to mail-in ballots, all of a sudden, the concern for election security just melts away.
Q But, Kayleigh, you yourself have voted by mail.
Q Kayleigh —
MS. MCENANY: Yes. Brian.
Q Thank you very much. Research — on mail-in ballots — research has shown that, one, it doesn’t benefit either party. It increases voter participation. Secretaries of state of both parties are still pursuing it. And fraud is — is not widespread.
And so why is the President continuing to tweet about this and to give the impression that there’s widespread fraud in the use of mail-in ballots when he himself used a mail-in ballot? The big question is: Some are concerned that the President may be laying the groundwork to cast doubt on the election. Is that what he’s doing by bringing this up?
MS. MCENANY: Well, I appreciate you bringing up this question and, specifically, the component about the President using mail-in ballots.
There’s an important distinction, and I think it’s lost upon a lot of people, but it’s important to make: is that the President is okay with mail-in voting so long as you have a reason. He’s not okay with mass mail-in voting where you auto-send, as I said, to all of these voter rolls with people who are dead, that are subject to fraud. That is the case.
We saw — I listed off for you — I think three of the five examples I gave you were from just this week and last week. So this does happen. And —
Q Well, then why is it that research has shown –Stanford University did a research study that showed that there wasn’t widespread fraud in these vote-by-mail and that it didn’t benefit either party and increased voter participation. So why would the President be against that?
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, it is subject to both parties. This can hurt both parties. I would note that a bipartisan commission — led in part by President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat — concluded that mail-in ballots, quote, “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
So moving the entire country to that system doesn’t make sense, and doing so in a hurried fashion ahead of November — just go look at the Democrat Iowa caucus and how it worked out when they tried to move to a new system.
And then, finally —
Q Is the President trying to lay groundwork to cast doubt on the results of the election in November?
MS. MCENANY: Finally, I —
Q Is he laying groundwork to try to cast doubt on the results of the election in November?
MS. MCENANY: No, he’s certainly not doing that. And I would finally note there’s an additional concern that was very well laid out by the Wall Street Journal editorial board that, in 2016, minorities and first-time voters were more likely to have mail-in ballots thrown out. So that is another troubling concern. In fact, 319,000 of those total votes were rejected.
Yes.
Q Thank you. Back in November, President Trump went up to Walter Reed, said it was for phase one of his physical. When does he plan to complete phase two and release the results to the public?
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, I don’t have an update on the physical, but because you asked that, I’ll specifically inquire about that today and try to get back to you.
Q But is he planning to do it?
MS. MCENANY: You what?
Q He does plan to do it?
MS. MCENANY: Yes, he does. Yes.
{snip}
Chanel.
Q Thank you, Kayleigh. If Joe Scarborough were innocent, couldn’t he sue the President for defamation? And then, in turn, couldn’t President Trump’s attorneys immediately depose Joe Scarborough for — and allow him to go under oath and explain how, you know, this 28-year-old woman was found dead by his desk with multiple skull fractures? Would the President welcome a defamation suit from Joe Scarborough?
MS. MCENANY: So, on that, I would just refer you back to some of my previous comments that the audio on the Don Imus show was very disturbing, where there was a lot of laughing and joking about this matter. That certainly is not a laughing and joking matter.
Q I mean, do you think that Scarborough has grounds to do so?
MS. MCENANY: So, I have no further comments other than to just point back to the Don Imus audio.
{snip}
Q Yes, Kayleigh. Thank you. You yourself have been able to vote by mail several times. Do you think anyone with health concerns — who has health concerns about going to the polls — should have that same convenience, that right?
MS. MCENANY: So what I would note again is the distinction between absentee voting and having a reason, and mass mail-out voting, where ballots are sent in a widespread fashion to people who are dead but on voting rolls, and those ballots end up in trash cans. That’s a state-by-state consideration. I’ll leave it to states to determine what is a valid reason.
But there are — you know, if you’re an elderly person who is unable to get to —
Q But the states are doing this out of health considerations for a lot of their residents. And if they want to pursue that track, is there anything wrong with that?
MS. MCENANY: Again, I mean, you’re asking — I assume you’re asking with relation to the pandemic that’s going on.
Q Yes.
MS. MCENANY: None of us know where we’re going to be in November; I’d first note that. We don’t have a crystal ball. But what I would say is that there are real concerns when you don’t do in-person voting. And South Carolina is a great example, where Democrats literally sued to force rush mail-in voting. And what happened? You had ballots from South Carolina ending up in Baltimore. That is not a tenable system.
And as states start to reopen and we see people out at beaches in Florida and we’re not seeing these mass spikes, and we see people safely going to restaurants and social distancing and washing their hands and doing all the wonderful mitigation techniques put forward by our experts, they’re reopening society and they’re doing so safely.
And I think there’s a way to continue our great civic duty of showing up and voting in a way that is safe. In the same way it’s safe to eat at a restaurant, it’s safe to go to a beach, we can vote in a safe fashion. And I think that’s something that is good and to be celebrated as we head to November.
All right, I think I took everyone’s question.
Q But if there’s a second wave, people should be able to vote —
MS. MCENANY: Thank you so much guys.
END 2:43 P.M. EDT
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POLITICS
Twitter Adds Warning Label to Dan Scavino Tweet of Video
The White House director of social media made it seem like the Democratic candidate was endorsing President Trump
By David Cohen | March 9, 2020
Twitter confirmed that the tweet was labeled based on its synthetic and manipulated media policy
Twitter
Twitter said last month that it would begin adding warning labels to content containing synthetic and manipulated media March 5, and the label made its debut over the weekend on a tweet by White House director of social media Dan Scavino.
Twitter Adds Warning Label to Dan Scavino Tweet of Video
The White House director of social media made it seem like the Democratic candidate was endorsing President Trump
By David Cohen | March 9, 2020
Twitter confirmed that the tweet was labeled based on its synthetic and manipulated media policy
Twitter said last month that it would begin adding warning labels to content containing synthetic and manipulated media March 5, and the label made its debut over the weekend on a tweet by White House director of social media Dan Scavino.
Link to tweet
