If you need additional proof that President Donald Trump is completely out-of-touch with Black Americans, here’s this: His White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany is backing his claim that he popularized Juneteenth. Because according [1] to him, “Nobody had ever heard of it” until he mentioned it.
She’s crediting him with a spike in Google searches for the historic holiday, Mediaite [2] reports.
That prompted NBC White House Correspondent Peter Alexander to press her on the comments.
“Does the president support Juneteenth as a federal holiday?” he asked. “In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, the president was speaking about Juneteenth and he said that nobody had ever heard of Juneteenth. What does that say about the president’s relationship to the black community if he would say that, when millions of African-Americans in this country commemorated it each year.”
McEnany tried to motor right past Alexander’s question by claiming Trump regularly celebrates Juneteenth. (Yeah, right). This is a woman who regularly makes fawning statements about her boss that are little more than outright lies. Nevertheless, she deflected when Alexander and another journalist suggested this year is the first time Trump had ever heard of the holiday. And frankly, that seems far more like it.
“There were a lot of people who did not know what Juneteenth was, and Google searches proved that,” she said, then claiming that Trump is responsible for the spike in searches.
But those searches could very well be due to protests spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement, but did McEnany mention this? Nope. These protests have spurred politicians and companies across the country to commemorate this day, which acknowledges the end of slavery in the Civil War era.
Here’s what McEnany had to say in the video below.
Press Sec. Kayleigh McEnany: "This President's routinely commemorated #Juneteenth [3]."
Reporter: "He said he learned about it this week." pic.twitter.com/Q8QfSDXpbQ [4]
— The Hill (@thehill) June 19, 2020 [5]