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White House reporter denies calling Kayleigh McEnany ‘lying b***h’ and press briefing transcript confirms it

The reporter in question was Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett, who was having a back-and-forth with McEnany during the briefing on Tuesday, July 21, before allegedly making the controversial comment
UPDATED JUL 22, 2020
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

During the latest White House press briefing, there was a moment when it seemed like a reporter called press secretary Kayleigh McEnany a "lying b***h," which caused many Trump supporters to react on social media.

The reporter in question was Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett, who was having a back-and-forth with McEnany during the briefing on Tuesday, July 21, before allegedly making the controversial comment. She pressed the secretary with multiple queries about maintaining the integrity of America’s elections. When the two briefly addressed voting by mail, the secretary said, "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."

After not receiving satisfactory answers, Halkett moved on to trying a follow-up question by asking about vaccine research. However, McEnany did not allow Halkett the third question, saying, "you’ve gotten two questions, which is more than some of your colleagues."

Some of the right-wing critics accused Halkett of using the misogynistic slur right after that. Given that McEnany, not unlike her predecessors, Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, seemingly has an adversarial relationship with the media, social media users weighed in on how it was not totally inconceivable that she was met with a little too testy a comeback from one of the reporters. 

"WOW: Fake news reporter calls @PressSec a 'lying b***h' on live television. The White House needs to suspend their press credentials for improper conduct. So unacceptable!" entrepreneur and activist Mike Coudrey wrote, while Nick Adams, an author who was endorsed by Trump, said, "RT if you think @KimberlyHalkett should lose her press pass for calling the @PressSec a 'lying b**ch.'"

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives with White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany to make a statement in the briefing room at the White House on May 22, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Getty Images)

The clip of the exchange which started a form of the famous 'Yanny or Laurel' debate on Twitter, was originally posted by White House Correspondent for Breitbart News, Charlie Spiering. ''Question for @KimberlyHalkett - Did you really say 'Okay, you’re a lying b**ch' about @PressSec" he captioned the tweet, to which Halkett clarified, "Thanks for asking @charliespiering ... there's a lot of misreporting out there about that briefing. The answer to your question is, I DID NOT. What I said was, 'OKAY, YOU DON'T WANT TO ENGAGE.'"

Even alt-right political activist and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec said in favor of Halkett: "The media has an extensive history of misrepresenting Trump's statements, going back to his announcement speech, and conservatives rightly call them out on it. You don't have to agree with @KimberlyHalkett, but she deserves to be represented truthfully as much as anyone else." And thanking him, the reporter reiterated her stance once more. "Thanks @JackPosobiec
I appreciate you, and others, who take the time to listen to the audio, and reflect it accurately. Again, to be clear, what I said was, 'Okay, you don't want to engage,'" she said. 

CNN's Daniel Dale also corroborated Halkett's claim. "Nobody called McEnany a 'lying b**ch.' When McEnany declined to continue responding to follow-ups, the reporter muttered, 'OK, you don't want to engage.' You don't even need to slow down the audio to hear the correct words clearly," he tweeted. 

The last and final confirmation of the fact that Halkett never used the slur against McEnany came from the White House itself when it released a transcript of Tuesday's press briefing. According to the word-by-word replay of what went down at the briefing, it was clear that while Halkett accused McEnany of not wanting to answer her questions, the words "lying b***h" were never used.

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