Donald Trump turned on his former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany because she apparently misspoke the result of a primary poll by nine points, calling her “milktoast” – an exquisite misnomer, given that the old insult’s correct spelling is “Milquetoast.”
Trump attacked McEnany after she said Tuesday during a Fox News appearance on “Jesse Waters Primetime” that the former president was leading Ron DeSantis in the Republican race by 25 points in a recent poll. Trump said the actual number was 34.
“Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on FoxNews,” Trump wrote to his dozens of followers on Truth Social. “I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up. While 25 is great, it’s not 34.”
Given most polls’ margin of error is around 5%, Trump chose to throw one of his most visible supporters overboard for what amounts to a 4% discrepancy.
The term “Milquetoast” became a pejorative for a shrinking or ineffectual person – which McEnany is demonstrably not – in the 1920s based on the timid comic-strip character Caspar Milquetoast, whose name is inspired by the soft blandness of “milk toast.” The breakfast food has always been spelled as two words, making “milktoast” a wholesale made-up phrase with a letter-to-letter inaccuracy rate far exceeding 4%.
And as if to ensure no one would mistake his post for something playful, he continued: “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!!!”
Completely unrelated to this rich and creamy gaffe, conservative media, former campaign staffers and other colorful characters hit back at Trump for attacking one of his own. While Trump’s off-hand insults are increasingly common – he’s lately thrown Laura Ingraham, Rupert Murdoch and Mick Mulvaney under the bus for tickytack reasons – not even his own likely voters could believe he would snap at one of his strongest and most visible supporters for something so minor.
