Reposting a story from April 2020:
It had taken months of practice, but McEnany had perfected her act as one of the original pro-Trump pundits on CNN. She described herself as "that blond girl passionately advocating for then candidate Donald Trump proudly wearing my gold cross" in her 2018 book.
Now, her rise to President Trump's next press secretary — at 31, among the youngest to ever to hold the position — turns her Trump defender role on cable news into an official White House position. She is replacing a camera-shy Stephanie Grisham, who did not hold a single press briefing during her nine-month tenure. McEnany, by contrast, loves a camera, and vice versa — with the glossy looks of a cable host, an appealing quality for a boss known to assess the telegenics of his appointees.
But it was a network the president purports to hate that made McEnany everything he would want in a press secretary. For over two years, CNN paid her to come to fight with other commentators over Trump, opportunities she took night after night. Before then, she was a virtual unknown.
"She auditioned on our air for this gig," said an executive at the network who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Many of her appearances devolved into shouting matches captured and monetized in countless videos described by the network's YouTube page as "CNN commentators clash." She clashed with other commentators over Trump's support from white supremacists: "He's not going to be baited into these traps you are trying to lay for him," she said. She clashed over Stephen K. Bannon's appointment as his chief strategist. Over polling data.
