Fox News co-host Kayleigh McEnany’s program “Outnumbered” broke into the top 20 last week in viewership of all the programs on cable and the achievement is well-deserved.
“Outnumbered,” which airs weekdays at 12 noon Eastern, ranked 18 among all cable original telecasts, with an audience of nearly 1.9 million on Thursday per ShowBuzzDaily.
Fellow regular co-hosts on the program include Harris Faulkner and Emily Compagno with other Fox News channel personalities rotating through.
There is always one male guest panelist on “Outnumbered,” hence the name.
Several of the other programs in the top 20 on Thursday were from Fox News, including “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “The Five,” “Jesse Watters Primetime,” “Hannity,” “America Reports,” “America’s Newsroom” and “The Faulkner Focus.”
There were no CNN or MSNBC shows in the top 20.
The closest was CNN’s “Erin Burnett Outfront” at 29, meanwhile “The Beat with Ari Melber” was MSNBC’s top-rated program at 41.
“Outnumbered” was among the top 10 cable news programs for average viewers during the entire month of August, with every other slot filled by a Fox News program, save MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” according to TV Newser.
“Maddow” only airs once a week.
Deadline reported that McEnany joined Fox News in March 2021 and soon thereafter was named co-host of “Outnumbered,” which launched in the spring of 2014.
The former Trump White House press secretary made headlines last week after calling out Democratic Georgia gubernatorial Stacey Abrams who claimed an unborn baby does not have a heartbeat at six weeks into the pregnancy.
McEnany cited multiple respected health institutions on Friday that contradict the candidate, including the National Library of Medicine, the March of Dimes, the U.K.’s National Health Service and the Mayo Clinic.
“So all these institutions that the left loves, that [Dr. Anthony] Fauci … I would assume bows down to — we no longer take them as credible because Stacey Abrams, a lunatic Democrat candidate, said something crazy,” McEnany said.
McEnany further noted that Planned Parenthood recently changed its website to match Abrams’ claim that there is no definitive heartbeat at six weeks into a pregnancy.
“A part of the embryo starts to show cardiac activity. It sounds like a heartbeat on an ultrasound, but it’s not a fully-formed heart — it’s the earliest stage of the heart developing,” its website said regarding development that occurs between five and six weeks.
However, an archive of the same webpage from July says that “a very basic beating heart and circulatory system develop.”
“Don’t you love how the science changes after a Democrat like Stacey Abrams says something crazy?” McEnany tweeted.
GONE WITH THE SCIENCE!
Don’t you love how the science changes after a Democrat like Stacey Abrams says something crazy?
Take a look for yourself at all of the respected scientific institutions (until yesterday I guess) that refer to a heartbeat at 5-6 weeks @OutnumberedFNC ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/jdS9lkziYN
— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) September 23, 2022
When McEnany became White House press secretary in April 2020 at 31, she was one of the youngest ever to serve but nonetheless was well prepared for the role.
By that point in her life, she had interned in the White House press office when Dana Perino was press secretary for then-President George W. Bush.
That opportunity was followed by stints as a producer for the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes” and “The Mike Huckabee Show” on radio. In the latter gig, she crossed paths with Huckabee’s daughter, future White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
Add to those experiences the Floridian’s education background, which includes a bachelor’s degree in international politics from Georgetown University and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School.
While enrolled in Georgetown, McEnany spent a year abroad studying at Oxford University, which she recounts in her book “For Such as Time as This” proved a valuable training ground for future White House press briefings.
At the school, students were required to write one or two 10-page papers a week and defend them in one-on-one “tutorials.” She recounted that during these sessions, a “highly credentialed and well-studied academic” would grill the students as they read their papers, challenging the ideas presented all along the way.
“The tutorial far eclipsed the press briefing in terms of difficulty. Preparing for these tense encounters certainly shaped the way I prepared before I went to the podium,” McEnany wrote.
She told The Western Journal in a December interview she saw part of her role as press secretary was to counter those false media narratives about then-President Donald Trump while staying true to her Christian faith.
“But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to be tough and have accountability and be able to fight back, not with literal fighting, but fight back with facts and substance and footnotes and have accountability,” McEnany said.
She has bought the same rigor to “Outnumbered” and viewers obviously appreciate what she and the other co-hosts have to offer.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
