Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany recently appeared to take a veiled shot at her old boss on Wednesday during an interview with his chief Republic primary rival.
Guest-hosting Fox News Tonight, McEnany interviewed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is currently a distant second behind former President Donald Trump in the polls.
At one point during the interview, McEnany, whom Trump called “milktoast” last month in one of the funnier misspellings imaginable, decried the “groupthink” response to the pandemic when she served under Trump:
You mentioned Covid there. And I have this very distinct memory. I was in the Oval Office with Dr. Anthony Fauci in the Situation Room with him. I mean, this man made you think like, your days were numbered, all of our days were numbered, all 323 million of us, you know?
But then I go to Florida. I met you on a tarmac. And you were saying some pretty bullish things about opening the state. I was a bit taken aback because it was such a contrast to kind of the groupthink I was hearing in Washington. But you earned the ire of the left on your Covid response. Now you’re getting attacked from the right there. There were a variety of responses to Covid. Why was yours the right one?
“Well, we made a decision to buck Fauci, buck the medical establishment, buck the media, the left, and some Republicans and say you know what? People in Florida have a right to work,” DeSantis responded. “Businesses have a right to be open. Kids have a right to be in school.”
DeSantis has taken several shots at Trump over his handling of the pandemic.
The governor bragged, “If you had been in like, the Florida panhandle in May, June 2020, it was like Covid didn’t even exist.”
“That’s true,” McEnany replied before commending his response to Covid.
“There’s no doubt about that,” she said. “I came to Florida a lot on the weekends. People don’t know that. I left the swamp and it was pretty joyful to be in Florida. I went to restaurants, I drove the highways, things were open.”
