Kayleigh McEnany repeated several old falsehoods around voting, Covid and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation
McEnany also made the flatly incorrect claim that there was not an orderly transfer of power from Barack Obama’s administration to then President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
To make her point, McEnany tried to argue the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — a probe that later morphed into the Mueller investigation — constituted a lack of an “orderly transition.” But the investigation did not stall or block the Trump transition team.
Mail-in ballots
McEnany again spread the baseless idea that mail-in ballots are susceptible to widespread fraud and suggested “there are real questions” over large scale mail-in voting.
Facts First: Election experts have told CNN time and time again that mail-in ballots are a safe form of voting and not subject to widespread fraud. There have been no reports from state election officials of either party of widespread voter fraud from mail-in ballots.
On November 12, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement calling this year’s election “the most secure in American history.”
Coronavirus deaths
McEnany also claimed that initial projections placed the number of potential Covid-19 deaths in the US at two million, adding “we are far below the 2 million that this could have been.”
Facts First: This is misleading.
In other words, that would be the loss of lives if no action were taken at all to mitigate the virus.
The report did not analyze what would happen if just the federal government took no action against the virus but rather what would occur if there were absolutely no “control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour.”
Mueller
McEnany claimed the investigation led by Mueller “exonerated President Trump.”
Facts First: This is false.
