After securing a fairly comfortable double-digit victory in Tuesday night’s New Hampshire GOP primary, Donald Trump celebrated by lashing out at his former White House press secretary for offering mild criticism of his victory speech.
The twice-impeached former president was displeased with Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany for saying that he should’ve adopted a “general election” tone in his speech rather than trash Nikki Haley, his last remaining Republican opponent. McEnany also noted that President Joe Biden had a “good night” while Trump still has work to do to consolidate the GOP base.
“I don’t need any advice from RINO Kayleigh McEnany on Fox,” Trump raged on his social media site Truth Social. “Just had a GIANT VICTORY over a badly failing candidate, ‘Birdbrain,’ and she’s telling me what I can do better. Save your advice for Nikki!”
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Additionally, despite Fox News’ almost completely obsequious coverage of his campaign, Trump also continued his running theme of blasting the conservative cable giant for not being sufficiently loyal to him.
“CNN & MSDNC TREATED MY BIG, DOUBLE DIGIT VICTORY OVER BIRDBRAIN, BETTER THAN FOX!” Trump blared in an all-caps post.
Following the ex-president’s grievance-filled victory speech on Tuesday night, which largely centered on his anger over Haley declaring that she’d remain in the race, McEnany appeared on Fox News and called Trump the “presumptive nominee.” McEnany, who pulled double duty as White House spokesperson and campaign adviser during Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, also offered up a bit of advice to her former boss.
“I would suggest that adopting a general election tone is what you do at this point, and here’s why I say this,” she said. “This was actually a fairly good night for Joe Biden. When you look at our voter analysis, only 10 percent said, ‘I would not vote for Joe Biden if he’s the nominee.’ He won a plurality of voters who said he was too old, he won a majority of voters who were upset about the Gaza War.”
She continued: “When you look at the Republican Party, seven in 10 Nikki Haley voters said, ‘I would not vote for Trump.’ There was a Des Moines Register poll, 43 percent said, ‘No, I wouldn’t vote for Trump.’ If I’m Trump, I sit back and I exclusively focus on the general election. I take the posture of a presumptive nominee. I focus on, number one, uniting the party, and number two, winning the independents, which Nikki Haley won 55-39 percent. That’s what I would do.”
This isn’t the first time that Trump has railed against McEnany, who was previously his chief defender and helped peddle his baseless voter fraud conspiracies after Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Last May, after McEnany said that polling in Iowa showed that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was “closing the gap” on Trump in the primary, Trump attacked his former spokesperson and longtime loyalist while bestowing a new Trumpian nickname upon her.
“Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on FoxNews. I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up,” Trump fumed at the time. “While 25 is great, it’s not 34. She knew the number was corrected upwards by the group that did the poll. The RINOS & Globalists can have her. FoxNews should only use REAL Stars!!!”
Stephanie Grisham, another former Trump White House press secretary who has fallen out of favor with the ex-president, told CNN last year that “this is what he does” and that Trump “uses you until there is no use for you anymore.”
