Kayleigh McEnany spars with reporters over whether Trump condemned white supremacy
01 October 2020
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany clashed repeatedly with members of the media on Thursday over whether or not President Trump has forcefully condemned white supremacy, at one pointing accusing CNN's Kaitlan Collins of asking a "partisan attack question."
Why it matters: It was one of the most confrontational press conferences yet by a White House press secretary brought in for the express purpose of sparring with a Washington press corps that the president has attacked as "the enemy of the people."
- Fox News reporter John Roberts opened the Q&A portion of the briefing by asking whether McEnany could provide a "declarative statement" explicitly condemning white supremacy on behalf of Trump.
- Instead, she pointed to past statements Trump has made denouncing the KKK and advocating for the death penalty for a white supremacist, claiming the president's "record on this is unmistakable and it's shameful the media refuses to cover it."
Key exchange:
COLLINS: "The president was asked about [the Proud Boys] and you say he denounced them. That's what you insist he did on the debate stage the other night. If that's the case, why are they celebrating what the president said on the debate stage in front of millions of people?"
MCENANY: "I don't speak for that group, so I'm not sure why you're asking me why they said certain things."
COLLINS: "If someone denounced you, you probably wouldn't put it on a t-shirt and make badges of it, right?"
MCENANY: "The president did denounce them. He was asked, 'Will you tell them to stand down?' He said 'Sure,' He said 'Stand back.' And then just yesterday when he was asked, he said specifically, 'Stand down,' a synonym with 'stand back.' And the president said 'sure' when asked by the moderator whether they should stand down. It's really interesting too to see the media seems to be the only one putting the names of these groups into headlines, into media reporting. He didn't know who the Proud Boys were."
Go deeper: The array of far-right groups "standing by" after Trump's call
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.