Fox Host Kayleigh McEnany Said ‘Wait For the Facts to Come Out’ on FBI Raid — She Has Done Anything But

Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany on Friday called on the media to “wait for the facts to come out” before speculating about the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

If only she practiced what she preached.

McEnany, who served in the Trump administration as press secretary during its dark final days, has repeatedly and wildly speculated about the raid on air at Fox News, where she now serves as a host.

On Friday’s Outnumbered, McEnany criticized The Washington Post for reporting that the classified materials Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago included sensitive information about nuclear weapons. She called the story “evasive” and urged the media to proceed with caution regarding its allegations.

“My point is, let’s wait for the facts to come out,” she said.

“There is a history,” McEnany continued, “of stories on anonymous sources that turn out not to be true, so let’s wait for something called facts, which many networks don’t wait for.”

Yet McEnany’s first on-air reaction to the raid ignored facts entirely.

Last Tuesday, the morning after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, McEnany boldly declared the United States a “banana republic.” (She then went even further, declaring we are “beyond” banana republic status.)

This, mind you, was before we had any idea what the FBI sought when they executed a search warrant of the president’s resort.

The next day, McEnany echoed Trump’s claims that FBI agents messed up former First Lady Melania Trump’s closet and went into his safe. Based on those comments from Trump, a notoriously unreliable narrator, McEnany insisted the FBI was “scouring through Melania’s closet, breaking open safes.”

She then cast the raid, which was ordered by Attorney General Merrick Garland and approved by a magistrate judge in Florida, as a politically motivated attack.

“It feels like the full power of the federal government raining down on a political enemy,” said McEnany.

This week, McEnany again defied her Friday advice by accusing the FBI and DOJ of leaking details about the raid to the press.

[Marco] Rubio is going a step further, though, in making this point. He said an investigation of a high-profile political figure is neither apolitical nor by the book if the investigators are leaking sensationalized claims to the media on a daily basis.

We saw this drip, drip, drip, The Washington Post report about nuclear material, New York Times report over the weekend about the Trump team’s communications. Merrick Garland, the very first words out of Merrick Garland’s mouth on Thursday were ‘I will not communicate through leaks.’ So I hope the same way they’re looking for the leaker at the Supreme Court, he’s looking for the leaker in DOJ and FBI because if you want to further undermine the confidence of half the country, continue the drip, drip, drip of leaks.

First off, McEnany has no idea if the claims reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times are “sensationalized.” Those facts remain unknown, like almost everything she has opined on in the last week. Secondly, she made the baseless assumption that the leaks came from law enforcement officials and not the Trump team or other sources.

McEnany isn’t alone on Fox News in baselessly speculating about the raid before knowing all the facts. The Justice Department investigation remains ongoing, and we won’t truly know its scope for some time.

McEnany and her fellow Trump boosters would be wise to proceed with caution — particularly in light of reporting that Trump allies are telling senior Republicans to ease up on criticizing the DOJ and FBI because “it is possible that more damaging information related to the search will become public.”

It may be hard for pundits — particularly ones as partisan as McEnany — to hold their fire and wait for all the facts before declaring the end of the republic. But they should at least try.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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