On Monday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany doubled down on trying to push the Bubba Wallace incident as a “hoax.” Her push came after Donald Trump made a tweet demanding that Wallace apologize more than two weeks after a noose was found in his garage.
McEnany inaccurately compared the NASCAR incident to the Jussie Smollett’s controversy when she was asked about Trump’s tweet by Fox News and during a press briefing.
“So NASCAR would note, their statement says that this garage pull rope was there since last fall, since far before the teams arrived at this garage,” McEnany told Fox News. “And they also said definitively, the FBI investigation determined it, that there was no hate crime versus Bubba committed.”
“What the president is making is a broader point that this rush to judgment, before the facts are out, is not acceptable,” she added. “We saw it with the Covington kids and saw it with Jussie Smollett, and now we saw it in this case before the FBI came to this conclusion.”
However, Wallace’s incident was not a hoax. Wallace wasn’t even the individual who discovered the noose or contacted the FBI.
Trump’s claim that it was a “hoax” and McEnany’s comparison to the Smollett is completely inaccurate. It was one of Wallace’s crew members that found the noose and reported it to NASCAR, who then contacted the FBI.
By comparing the Wallace incident to Jussie Smollett, Trump and McEnany are saying that Wallace and his team faked a hate crime, which simply isn’t true.
Smollett the former star of the show “Empire” was indicted for allegedly staging a hate crime in Chicago back in 2019.
Wallace’s team never made a hate crime claim. A noose was found, and the incident was investigated by the FBI.
During her press briefing, the subject was brought up several times and McEnany declined to give an answer to why Trump demanded Wallace publicly apologize.
“When you level false charges, you not only slander me, you slander the American people,” McEnany quoted Trump as saying instead of directly answering the question.
The subject was brought up again at the end of the press briefing and she again refused to answer.
“I’m not going to answer a question a sixth time,” McEnany said.
“Kayleigh, you’ve been asked it but you haven’t answered it,” a reporter then responded.
Another reporter asked about Trump’s criticism of NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag at events.
At first, McEnany declined to answer the question, but then she stated, “You’re focusing one word at the very bottom of a tweet that’s completely taken out of context.”
