McEnany has not been without controversy: She previously promoted the racist conspiracy that President Obama was not born in America — "birtherism" that was famously encouraged by Trump.

"How I Met Your Brother — Never mind, forgot he's still in that hut in Kenya. #ObamaTVShows," McEnany tweeted in 2012.

In another message in 2012, she wrote, "Birth certificates and college transcripts #ThingsThatEnrageDemocrats."

McEnany is married to minor league baseball player Sean Gilmartin, 29, and they have a 5-month-old daughter.

"I've always been someone who — I just like to speak my mind and I like to say what I believe," McEnany said on Georgetown's Fly on the Wall podcast in 2018. "Media gives you that freedom to — you don't feel like you have to say what someone wants to hear, you can say what you think and what you believe. And one of the reasons I think Donald Trump was so successful is taking that attribute of what I find in media to politics."

The revival of the White House press briefings comes one week after Trump's daily coronavirus briefings came under heavy fire when the president floated the idea that injections of disinfectants could potentially be used to kill the novel coronavirus.

Trump — who had been appearing nightly at the hours-long briefings, where he argued with reporters and alternately explained and defended his record — appeared at one more coronavirus briefing, last Friday, but did not take questions.

Those briefings have not been held since.

"I think when misinformation comes out or you just say something that pops in your head, it does send a wrong message," Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said about Trump in an interview on ABC earlier this week.

McEnany will now take over for the administration's public messaging — though observers have long noted that probably the most important audience member for White House press team is the president himself.

As she wrapped up her roughly 30-minute press conference Friday so she could be with her daughter, McEnany seemed to acknowledge that.

She touted a Fox News town hall with Trump scheduled for Sunday and noted his coronavirus briefings were "highly rated."

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