Kayleigh McEnany says Donald Trump called in 2020 to ask her to become his next White House press secretary, and she took the call with a 3-month-old baby in the car behind her. She said she reached into the back seat to hand the infant a pink pacifier before picking up, hoping the child would stay quiet through the moment that would send her into the White House.
The former press secretary, now 38, described the offer as the kind of job she had hoped for, even as she was still learning how to balance it with motherhood. She had her first baby in 2019 while working on Trump’s unsuccessful 2020 bid for reelection, then became White House press secretary in April 2020, taking over from Stephanie Grisham.
McEnany said in a late-August interview with that she believes it is possible to have children and a high-powered career, even when the balance is difficult. She said, “Taking the job of your dreams and being a wonderful mother, I realized that those two things are not mutually exclusive,” and added, “You can do it, and I was able to do it, but it certainly had its challenges.”
That belief came with hesitation. McEnany said her daughter was four months old when she was considering the role and that she felt “a lot of apprehension,” asking herself, “How can I do this?” During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she left the baby with her mom and her husband when she moved to Washington, DC, saying, “I basically had to leave my baby in Florida and pray.”
The arrangement was complicated and often emotional. McEnany said her mom and husband flew up regularly to visit, that the child ended up spending most of her time in DC, and that she made sure to have dinner with her family when they were all together. She also said she flew down on weekends when her daughter was in Florida and worked remotely, remembering one motorcade ride when all she could think about was, “I want to see my daughter.”
McEnany credited her mom, her husband, Trump and Mark Meadows for helping her manage the strain. She said Meadows told her, “Kayleigh, don’t you usually catch a flight around this time? Get out of here. Go see your family,” and that Trump told her, “Kayleigh, next time send one of the younger (aides) on the trip. You go be with your family. Nothing is more important than that time.” The story now lands as a reminder that for McEnany, the White House job was never separate from the demands of raising an infant, and she says the hardest part was the distance between the two.
