McEnany will join Outnumbered founding anchor Harris Faulkner and co-host Emily Compagno on the series, which features a series of rotating panelists discussing the issues of the day, according to the network. McEnany, who joined Fox News as an on-air commentator earlier this month, served as press secretary in President Trump’s administration and worked for Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign as its national press secretary. 

Read also: Emily Compagno Named Co-Host of Fox News Channel's 'Outnumbered'

McEnany also served as national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. She also worked as a political analyst for CNN where she provided commentary surrounding the 2016 presidential election. 

McEnany began her career in media as an intern at Fox News, where she later became a production assistant before attending Harvard Law School.

“Kayleigh’s unique background in politics and law coupled with her experiences confronting women's health challenges and life as a new mom will add robust insight to Outnumbered — we are delighted to welcome her back to Fox News where she began her media career,” said Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott in a statement. 

McEnany added, “I am thrilled to join the incredible women of Outnumbered and look forward to working alongside the talented Harris Faulkner and Emily Compagno as we discuss the top issues impacting the country.”

Read also: Fox News Revamps Daytime Lineup

The McEnany announcement follows the network's hiring of former President Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump as an on-air contributor. 

The video also came as a Capitol Police officer reportedly died of injuries sustained in the attack on the Capitol Wednesday (Jan. 6).

Also Read: Senator Schumer Calls for Trump Removal

Thursday night, the White House Office of the Press Secretary sent out a one-line notice that the President had "released a video address on national healing and unity," and a link to it.

In the video, a somewhat chastened-sounding Trump said he was addressing the "heinous attack" on the Capitol and, perhaps for the first time in weeks, did not say the election had been rigged or stolen from him.

The President said he was outraged by the violence and the "defiling of the seat of American Democracy." It was a far different tone from earlier statements that the supporters who, on his advice, marched to the Capitol while the electoral votes were being counted and tried to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's win, which Trump had told the crowd in a lengthy speech was illegitimate and stolen by the media and his political opponents.

In the video, he said those who committed acts of violence and destruction did not represent the country.

"We have just been through a tense election and emotions are high," he said, adding: "Tempers must be cooled and calm restored."

Also Read: Joe Scarborough Drops F-Bomb

Trump said his campaign had pursued "every legal avenue to contest the election results" and that that had been an effort to defend democracy." But his claims of a stolen election were not repeated. Instead, he said he continued to believe election law reform was needed. 

"Now Congress has certified the results," he said, "and a new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20. My focus now turns to insuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation."

The President ended the video with a direct appeal to his base that seemed to indicate the video was also a way to try and preserve his political future. "To all of my wonderful supporters, I know you are disappointed but I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning." 

Actually it was only putting his signature on a bill, though with his refusal to sign the defense authorization and COVID-19 and omnibus spending bills, perhaps that was a heavy lift in the current climate.

Also Read: Enough Is Enough

The President has signed into law the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act, which authorizes the building of a national memorial in D.C. honoring journalists who have died in the line of duty, that duty being keeping the world informed.

“Since our nation’s founding, a free press has played an integral role in reporting the facts, informing the public and holding our democratic institutions to account," said National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith. "Sadly, too often, journalists have made the ultimate sacrifice at home and abroad in service to the First Amendment. America’s broadcasters commend Congress for passing and President Trump for signing into law the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act to commemorate those who have lost their lives reporting the news.”

One of those that hit particularly close to home for reporters covering the communications beat was the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in 2002 while covering Islamic extremists in Pakistan. Pearl had covered telecommunications in D.C. the late 1990s before becoming the paper's South Asia bureau chief. 

Also Read: President Signs Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act

The bill does not fund the memorial. In fact it says federal funds can't be used for that purpose.*  But it does establish the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation, which is authorized to create a memorial on federal land commemorating "America's commitment to a free press as represented by journalists who sacrificed their lives in service to that cause." The foundation is "solely responsible for acceptance of contributions and payment of the expenses for the establishment of the commemorative work."

Also Read: Trump Calls Out Media 'Criminals' Over Hunter Biden Story

President Trump has been, inarguably, the harshest critic of journalists and mainstream media of any modern President, mocking their appearance, calling them corrupt and enemies and criminals and purveyors of fake news. He has himself been branded (while a presidential candidate) by the Committee to Protect Journalists as a threat to press freedom “unknown in modern history,” as well as an ongoing threat to journalist safety.

*The 1986 Commemorative Works Act generally prohibits the use of federal funds for memorial design and construction, but Congress has made exceptions, including in 2005 appropriating $10 million for the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, but only as a matching grant.

A host of services including broadcast networks ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, Telemundo and Univision -- along with cable networks CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, C-SPAN and MSNBC -- will air the debate live beginning at 9 pm from Nashville. NBC News’ Kristen Welker will moderate the debate. 

The debate will be the second between the two candidates. The first debate on Sept. 29 -- which was marred by numerous interruptions by the candidates -- drew more than 73.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen. For tonight’s debate, the Commission on Presidential Debates said it will mute each candidate’s microphone for two minutes as the other candidate answers moderator questions. 

The two candidates held dueling Oct. 15 Town Hall meetings after a debate scheduled for that day was cancelled by the Commission on Presidential Debates following President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. 

The Presidential Town Hall happens in Philadelphia. Marc Burstein is executive producing for ABC. 

ABC News said it has offered to host a town hall with Joe Biden, Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president. 

Streaming channel ABC News Live will have pre- and post-show coverage.

Fox News averaged 3.7 million viewers in primetime for the week of June 15-July 21 for its 23rd consecutive win, said Nielsen. Fox News was helped by a network record 6.6 million viewer primetime average on Saturday for its coverage of the Tulsa political rally. 

MSNBC finished second with 2 million viewers followed by CNN’s 1.6 million watchers. HGTV took fourth place with 1.1 million viewers followed by TLC’s 1.1 million viewers. TBS (975,000 viewers), Hallmark Channel (866,000), History (840,000), Food Network (820,000), and USA Network (785,000) rounded out the top 10 most watched networks for the week.

On a 24-hour basis, Fox News topped the charts for the 24th consecutive week. Fox News, MSNBC and CNN were the only three networks to average more than 1 million viewers in total day for the week, said Nielsen. 

The second half of the series' fifth season will return Aug. 16 and will continue through the presidential election, said the network. The Circus will take viewers behind the scenes campaigns for President Trump and Democratic presumptive candidate Joe Biden as both move toward Election Day in November, said the network. 

The first part of the fifth season of The Circus averaged more than 1 million viewers during its run this past winter, said Showtime. 

It seems like the public is just as conflicted as policymakers on how and whether to regulate online content. 

The majority or respondents to a new poll say they want some misleading information removed from social media, either by the companies or government or some independent entity. 

That is according to a new Gallup/Knight Foundation poll, “Free Expression, Harmful Speech, and Censorship in a Digital World,” conducted amidst the debate over social media's Sec. 230 protection from civil liability for most content on their sites, and the President's feud with Twitter over its labeling of his tweets. 

But the poll found something of a disconnect between the desire to address the "info-demic" of unverified or false information and the desire for free expression online, which basically sums up the current debate. 

About two thirds (65%) said they favor allowing people to use social media to express their views, but 85% said they favor the removal of false or misleading health information, for example, during the pandemic, and 81% favor removing intentionally misleading information on elections and politics. 

The rub, of course, is who, or what in the event of an algorithm, decides whether something is intentionally misleading. 

The study found that 80% said they don't trust "Big Tech" to make "the right decisions" about what content should or shouldn't be on their sites, but they trust the government even less to make the right calls, particularly conservatives. 

A majority (66%) said they support keeping the Sec. 230 liability shield, while 81% said they favored the creation of independent oversight boards to oversee content policy on social media. 

The online survey, actually two surveys combined, were conducted Dec. 3 and 15, 2019, among 1,628 Gallup Panel members and between March 17 and 30, 2020 among 1,449 Gallup Panel members. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points at 95% confidence.  

That is one of the takeaways from his and his legal team's response Saturday to the articles of impeachment on which he is being tried by the Senate beginning Tuesday (Jan. 21). That is not to be confused with the President's legal brief, which will go into greater detail on the charges and isn't due until Monday (Jan. 20). 

Related: Rep. Schiff Officially Presents Articles of Trump Impeachment 

According to sources close to the President's legal team, they are arguing that the impeachment proceeding is a dangerous attack on the American people and their fundamental right to freely choose their President. 

They will call it a brazen and unlawful attempt to overthrow the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, which they say is a highly partisan (translation: Democrats") obsession with impeachment that began before President Trump was elected. 

They will argue that far from high crimes and misdemeanors, the articles don't allege any crime at all. They say the abuse of power article could do lasting damage to separation of powers becuase it threatens the President's assertion of a legitimate executive branch confidentiality interest, which they said cannot constitute obstruction of Congress. 

The President's legal team will also argue that Democrats continued to move the linguistic target, from "extortion" and "bribery" (they did not mention "collusion") to "quid pro quo" and finally "abuse of power," with "quid pro quo" failing to make an appearance in the articles. 

They will also go to process issues, saying that the House impeachment process was fundamentally flawed and illegitimate because it denied the President basic rights to counsel, to cross examine witnesses and to present evidence. They will argue that the President responded appropriate to all those subpoenas he didn't provide information for, which was to point out their constitutional defects. 

Asked about the Government Accountability Office report that concluded the GAO violated the law in holding up Ukraine aid for political purposes, they said that, first, that was not part of the articles of impeachment and, second, that the GAO just appeared to be asserting itself into the news cycle and that they had had to go back and change rulings in the past and that "it went after" Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and George W. Bush and the media hadn't reported that--they did not elaborate. 

In any event, they said, the President did nothing wrong.

The White House has confirmed the President's legal team, led by counsel to the President Pat A. Cipollone and Jay Alan Sekulow.

Joining them are Kenneth Starr, former Solicitor General, former Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and former independent counsel; Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School; Pam Bondi, special advisor to the President and former attorney general of Florida; Jane Serene Raskin, private counsel to the President; Eric D. Herschmann, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres LLP; Robert Ray, partner, Thompson and Knight, LLP, and former independent counsel.  

In a Wednesday afternoon Tweet, Zucker said that President Trump and White House Secretary Sarah Saunders had a "complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media."

RELATED: CNN, Time Warner Center Evacuated 

Zucker's tweet was posted after Trump called "abhorrent" suspected bomb packages sent to CNN's New York offices as well as to political figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, democratic donor George Soros, and Congresswomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Maxine Waters. "We have to come together and send one, very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America," Trump said. 

Trump however, never mentioned CNN --which he has criticized often during his Presidency -- in his remarks.  

Earlier in the day, the White House, Vice President Mike Pence and several other politicians released statements condemning the suspected attacks. 

[embed]https://twitter.com/CNNPR/status/1055183653351972864[/embed]

Veteran TV journalist and multiple Emmy Award-winner Dan Rather is best known for delivering breaking news to television viewers over the better part of three decades.

Yet in this 2016 interview Rather also showcased his talent for prognostication when he accurately predicted the political appeal of then Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump prior to his unconventional and unexpected election to the highest political office in the United States.  

SportsCenter host Jemele Hill will depart the show and take on a new role as writer for the network’s The Undefeated online site, the network said Friday. 

 Hill, who took over co-hosting duties for the 6 pm SportsCenter show along with Michael Smith last February, will host her last SC6 segment on Feb. 2. Smith will remain as host of the daily SC6 show.

RELATED:Jemele Hill, Michael Smith SportsCenter's New Dynamic Duo

Hill came under fire last September for calling President Trump a “white supremacist" as part of a series of politically-themed tweets. She was suspended last October for violation of the company’s social media guidelines after she sent out a tweet calling for a boycott of the Dallas Cowboys after team owner Jerry Jones vowed to bench any players kneeling during the national anthem.

Hill in a statement said she approached management about the change, adding that hosting SC6 really wasn't her calling and that she prefered instead to write and report. 

“My first choice was to work with The Undefeated, a site that covers the intersection of race, African-American culture and sports in creative and compelling ways,” she said.

ESPN Executive Vice President of Production and Executive Editor Norby Williamson said the show has undergone recent format changes as it looks to draw viewers at 6 pm. “The telecast continues to evolve as our primary mission is serving sports fans no matter the time of day,” Williamson said. “We have clearly learned that viewers expect the most comprehensive news coverage and compelling analysis during the 6 p.m. hour. Michael Smith is an experienced journalist and seasoned commentator and I'm confident that his talents can help us achieve our objectives as we move forward.”

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017

Since then, ESPN has been playing defense most of the week, initially distancing itself from the outspoken Hill’s comments and saying they did not represent the network's views.

— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) September 12, 2017

Yesterday the White House chimed in, with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Saunders stating that Hill’s comments were “certainly something that I think is a fireable offense.”

Hill later in the evening tweeted out another response by saying her initial Twitter comments “expressed my personal beliefs” and that her comments “painted ESPN in an unfair light.”

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 14, 2017

ESPN then released a second published statement on the matter: "Jemele has a right to her personal opinions, but not to publicly share them on a platform that implies that she was in any way speaking on behalf of ESPN. She has acknowledged that her tweets crossed that line and has apologized for doing so. We accept her apology." 

Whether or not you agree with Hill’s comments or how ESPN and the White House handled the situation, it certainly furthers a debate the country has been wrestling with recently regarding the intersection of sports and race during one of the most politically partisan, racially-charged times in the country’s history.

Should athletes and sports journalists on either side of the political aisle keep silent on social and cultural issues and just stay within the sports arena, or should they be free to participate in the discussion, regardless of how uncomfortable or controversial those comments may be to some?

Should those in positions of power, such as corporate media entities – afraid of alienating a portion of their viewers – all the way up to the Oval Office be able to influence and effectively advocate for the silencing of athletes and/or sports journalists over any and all dialogue revolving around race?

How we finally answer those questions will go along way toward navigating through the difficult and potent mix of politics, race and sports.

My statement about the cancellation of #Believerpic.twitter.com/ITtXAyQwd5

— Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan) June 9, 2017

Aslan in a June 3 tweet called Trump a "piece of s**t' and an "embarrasement to humankind" in response to one of the President's tweets promoting his controversial travel ban after the terroist attack at London Bridge.

Aslan later deleted the tweet and in another tweet apologized for his response. 


 My statement: pic.twitter.com/pW69jjpoZy

— Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan) June 4, 2017

The announcement comes on the heels of CNN's firing of comedian Kathy Griffin earlier this month after Griffin posed with a prop resembling a bloodied, severed head of the president. Griffin hosted the network's New Year's Eve special with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

Comedy Central will launch a new late night series later this month based on President Donald Trump, the network said Monday.

The series, The President Show, debuts April 27 at 11:30 pm and stars series creator Anthony Atamanuik, who portrays President Trump as he hosts his own late night series, said network officials. According to Comedy Central, the series features the President as he bypasses the “crooked media” by hosting a late-night show directly from the Oval Office. The series also stars actor Peter Grosz, who plays Trump’s sidekick Vice President Mike Pence.

The President Show is executive produced by Atamanuik, Peter Grosz, Adam Pally (Making History, The Mindy Project), and 3 Arts Entertainment’s Olivia Gerke, Josh Lieberman, and Greg Walter.

FBI director James Comey confirmed Monday that as part of its counterintelligence mission, the FBI was investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, including "investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and the Russian government's efforts." 

He said that would include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed. Comey was testifying on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election at a hearing of the House Select Intelligence Committee.

Comey said he had been authorized by the Justice Department to say that much but could not elaborate, including on who might be being investigated.

He said he has briefed Congress in detail about the investigation but could not do so in public. He also said he could not say how long the investigation would take but would "follow the facts wherever they lead." 

Comey said while it is agency policy not to confirm ongoing investigations, this was a special circumstance, and it would be in the public interest to do so.

Comey said the investigation began in late July but said it was impossible to say how long it would ultimately take.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) pushed Comey on whether reporters could be charged with a felony for publishing the name of the subject of information collected by intelligence agencies, subject to a court order, and unlawfully leaked--in this instance Gen. Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor. Comey would not weigh in, signaling that was still an open question, but in his experience that had not been the case.

Trey said the felonious dissemination of classified information is a crime.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) asked what the government's responsibility is in correcting false information in the media. Comey said there was a whole lot being reported that was, indeed, wrong, but that the FBI can't correct incorrect reports on classified information because it would be giving information to the other side. He said he can't tell those news outlets what was wrong or why.

Fox News took top primetime ratings honors last week as President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremonies last Friday proved to be a ratings boondoggle for the major cable news networks.

Fox News averaged 3.9 million viewers, topping competing cable news network CNN for first place during the week of Jan. 16 to Jan. 22, according to Nielsen. Fox News’ Jan. 20 coverage of President Trump’s inauguration ceremonies also accounted for 14 of the top 15 most watched shows for the week, Nielsen said.

HGTV finished third for the week with 1.6 million viewers, followed by USA Network’s 1.5 million viewers.

Discovery Channel and MSNBC tied for fifth with 1.4 million viewers each, followed by TBS and History (tied with 1.3 million viewers each); TNT (1.2 million) and Investigation Discovery, ESPN and Disney Channel (all tied with 1.1 million viewers), according to Nielsen.

Fox News was also the most watched network on a 24-hour basis for the week, while TBS was the top choice among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen.