I recently viewed footage of President Trump’s latest mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany trying to justify his refusal to condemn the confederate flag as NASCAR has done because of the racist beliefs it symbolizes. She nimbly refuses to answer questions and instead tries to steer the conversation back to one of her recognizable talking points.
McEnany is a gifted mouthpiece. I’ve been a spokesperson for several multimillion dollar companies. And I was good at it. So, I recognize talent when I see it.
I don’t question whether McEnany is good at her job. She has incredible PR skills. It’s something that can’t be taught, it’s a sense of calm and indivisible commitment to get the point across no matter what the obstacles.
The question is if she is breaking a code among PR people to do good and not harm.
If you wanted to put a Star Wars reference to it, she has tapped into the Force but we Jedi can’t understand what possesses her to cross over to the Dark Side of the Force in order to defend an ego-driven tyrant set on destroying the rule of law and declaring himself Emperor.
I have found over the years that there has always been a brotherhood among public relations people. When I was heading up public relations at a well-known home improvement brand, the team wanted to get one of the vice presidents a gift from his favorite sports team. I got in touch with the team’s PR guy and next thing you know we have a very happy VP.
A colleague of mine relayed a similar story from when his child was born. My colleague was, and continues to be, a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan. Apparently, children born at a certain hospital are given crocheted Packer’s hats knitted by local elderly fans interested with passing along their love of the team – or at least that was the case when his child was born. Well, my colleague tried every avenue to get one of these hats for his newborn and ran into nothing but dead ends. So, he called up the hospital’s PR guy. You guessed it, the next thing you know he has a hat for his baby.
Part of the code that PR people share is to not lie. It is to tell the truth in the way you want it to be interpreted. McEnany has lost sight of that. She knows that she is selling off a piece of her soul every time she uses her talents to defend a racist president. But she goes beyond that. Like Trump, McEnany flat out lies to the media, to the U.S. voters, and to the world at large.
The Washington Post, one of the most respected annals of the truth – the newspaper that broke the Watergate Scandal – has tracked the fact that Trump has lied over 19,000 times since taking office. Let that sink in. We all know he lies. One would have to have the brain capacity of a potato not to recognize that 90% of the things out of his mouth are lies of one degree or another. Yet McEnany in one of her first addresses to the media tried to claim that Trump doesn’t lie and the she wouldn’t ever lie to the public either.
That boat has long since sailed and now it is sinking as more and more people wise up to Trump’s racist actions and the fact that he is in bed with Russia – to the degree that he still won’t condone Russia’s putting bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers. Will McEnany go down with the ship?
Political historian Heather Cox Richardson put it succinctly in a recent Facebook article, “The White House and Trump supporters are trying to pretend that the world Trump continually tweets about is real, while the rest of the country is proving that reality doesn’t much care about the fictions Trump is peddling.”
There is a brotherhood among those charged with public relations duties. It is our duty to tell the truth. It is our duty to help make society a more informed place to exist. McEnany is breaking that code every day.
It’s sad to see someone sell their soul; especially someone with as much talent as McEnany. But we can’t control whether someone else uses their gifts for evil, as McEnany does. All we can do is shine a light on their evil and do our best to continue to provide the truth.
Peace. Love. Trust.
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