Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany backed open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens on CNN in 2015, telling Don Lemon that illegals are “here to stay” and that deportation is “not the American way” as she bashed the border hawk policies of then-candidate Donald Trump.
Kayleigh McEnany served as a token Republican on CNN before her time with the Trump White House and took up the mantle of Never Trumpism and Koch Brothers-style open borders during her time on air. Now, a video compilation has emerged documenting some of McEnany’s worst CNN moments, going viral on Twitter in the aftermath of her falling out with President Trump; which comes after McEnany, now with Fox News and apparently trying to nudge along the DeSantis campaign, minimized Trump’s lead over DeSantis in the 2024 primary polls.
“The mainstream Republican does not want to send the illegal immigrants back to Mexico,” McEnany told Don Lemon in 2015. “I think that they’re here to stay, that’s not the American way. We’re not going to ship people across the border. There has to be some path to citizenship.”
“Donald Trump has shown himself to be a showman,” McEnany added later in the same Lemon appearance.
“I don’t think he’s a serious candidate.”
In another CNN appearance in a Lemon-led panel discussion, McEnany slammed Trump as a “progressive” and said that she doesn’t “want to claim this guy” as a Republican.
Hilariously, the panel was discussing a CNN GOP Primary poll conducted between June 18th and 24th, 2015, which showed Jeb Bush leading the entire GOP field and future President Trump in second place.
“This is not a true Republican candidate,” McEnany said of Trump. “And the fact that he’s being portrayed as such in media is troublesome and not accurate.”
Watch the video below:
“Trump shouldn’t be so mean to Kayleigh!”
Also Kayleigh McEnany:
“People in New Hampshire are very sick, especially when they see that Donald Trump is No. 2 and doesn’t deserve to be there.”
“Donald Trump is the last person going to bring voters into the tent.”
“Mainstream… pic.twitter.com/vYZfT2E1gS
— Leskov Brandonovic (@fjb4587) May 31, 2023
McEnany’s transformation from an open-borders Never Trumper at CNN to a Trump White House Press Secretary to a pro-DeSantis anchor at Fox News could be compared to the evolution of another young female news anchor, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
In 2015, when McEnany worked as CNN’s token Republican panelist, Collins was working at The Daily Caller and joined a Fox News program to spout off anti-Soros talking points, warning that Soros was using open borders to replace Western populations.
Like McEnany, Collins has since made a major transformation and is now one of pro-Soros CNN’s most visible anchors.