OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany tore into Jen Psaki, President Joe Biden’s former press secretary, this week over comments she made about the midterm elections.
Psaki, who now works for MSNBC, recently spoke about rising crime in the United States and warned that November’s midterms could be bad for Biden.
During Sunday morning’s broadcast of “Meet the Press,” Psaki told host Chuck Todd that Democrats would be wise to focus on extremism, particularly within the Republican Party, and not actual issues facing the country.
“Look, I think that Democrats — if the election is about who is the most extreme, as we saw, you know, Kevin McCarthy touch on there with Marjorie Taylor Greene, I’ll say her name, sitting over his left side, then they’re going to win,” Psaki said. “If it is a referendum on the president, they will lose.”
Psaki went on to list some critical issues and states in which those specific topics might play a key role in pushing more people to the polls.
“Crime is a huge vulnerability for Democrats,” Psaki continued. “I would say one of the biggest vulnerabilities. And if you look at Pennsylvania, for example, what’s been interesting to me is it’s always you follow the money, and where are people spending money. And in Pennsylvania, the Republicans have been spending millions of dollars on the air on crime ads against [Democrat John] Fetterman because that’s where they see his vulnerability.”
“So, yes, the economy is hanging over everything,” Psaki concluded. “But you do have to look at state-by-state factors. And crime is a huge issue in the Pennsylvania race.”
WATCH:
Here is the clip in which Psaki says — verbatim — that "crime is a huge vulnerability for Democrats"pic.twitter.com/g3bqRgWHCy
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 26, 2022
McEnany, who now serves as a co-host on the popular Fox News program “Outnumbered,” went after Psaki for her comments.
“Jen Psaki is exactly right. You don’t hear me say that often, but good for her for giving this really sober, clear-eyed assessment to her party. If it’s a referendum on President Biden, Democrats lose,” McEnany said.
“She went on in that clip to say, ‘A weak kind of Achilles heel for my party is crime.’ And the immediate question I had was, ‘did you tell your boss that?’” she added.
Co-host Harris Faulkner chimed in and asked McEnany: “You think — and she still would probably? You would know, you’re a former press secretary.”
McEnany said Psaki had access to Biden and wondered if she ever brought that up to him.
“She still would, presumably, especially if she had Oval Office walk-in privileges. So I wonder if at any point she said to him, ‘Hey, Mr. President, this is a weak spot for us.’ Because we know it took President Biden six months into his presidency to even give an address on crime, to even acknowledge it as an issue. Did she push for that to happen? Because it is now the number four issue among voters. And you pointed this out on your show. One point she didn’t mention, the number three issue among voters is education. Looks like Virginia was a bellwether. So take note of what happened there because it could happen again on a nationwide scale,” she said.
WATCH:
McEnany’s meteoric rise to cable news stardom continued this month as her “Outnumbered” program on Fox News draws more viewers.
The show broke into the top 20 programs in all of cable television this week, besting every program on rival networks CNN and MSNBC.
Several other Fox News programs were also in the top 20, with Tucker Carlson’s nightly offering at No. 4.
McEnany went viral last week when she rebuked a patently false claim from Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams regarding fetal heart tones.
