Ron DeSantis has jumped into Kayleigh McEnany’s corner to shine a light on the insults Donald Trump lobbed at his former press secretary this week.
DeSantis, appearing on a New Hampshire Journal podcast, called her one of Trump’s “greatest selections” in a backhanded compliment but in certainly more favorable terms than the former president had when he nicknamed her “Milktoast.”
“Donald Trump, even his greatest supporters have acknowledged, had a tough time picking good people,” DeSantis said on the podcast published Friday. “He had a lot of terrible personnel decisions. People like Jerome Adams, his surgeon general. And, obviously, he elevated [Anthony] Fauci to lead the task force. But Kayleigh was one of his greatest selections. She did a fantastic job.”
DeSantis added that McEnany’s family was from Florida and that she was Harvard-educated lawyer who was too often underestimated during her stint as Trump’s White House press secretary.
“So we were very proud of her,” DeSantis said, glossing over the fact Trump is a Florida resident.
“She’s an absolute killer, and she ate the press alive,” DeSantis said. “And so for [Trump] to be attacking her, I thought that was really, really bad.”
Trump soured on McEnany, now a glowing Fox News personality, after she broke down the result of a primary poll in which, according to Trump, she shorted him by 9 points. To express his displeasure, he took to his social network, Truth Social, on Tuesday, calling her Kayleigh “Milktoast” McEnany in a misspelling of milquetoast, defined by Merriam-Webster as a timid, meek or unassertive person.
McEnany had appeared on Fox News during “Jesse Waters Primetime,” saying Trump was leading DeSantis in the Republican race by 25 percentage points, according to a recent poll. Trump claimed the correct margin was 34 points.
“Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on FoxNews,” Trump wrote to his dozens of followers on Truth Social. “I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up. While 25 is great, it’s not 34.”
