Kayleigh McEnany clashes with Jake Tapper after drawing outrage for Biden tweet

Former colleague told Jake Tapper Ms McEnany was courting QAnon with tweet

Kayleigh McEnany clashed with her old foes CNN on Twitter after being heavily criticised for her Joe Biden tweet.

Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary became embroiled in a war of words with the news network’s Jake Tapper after she live tweeted the president’s town hall on the channel.

Ms McEnany sparked outrage when she joked about one of Mr Biden’s comments during the event that he prefers children to adults.

“Signing off with a final notable quote from Joe Biden during his town hall this evening: ‘Everyone knows I love kids better than people,’” she tweeted.

Mr Tapper took to Twitter to tell his 3.3 million followers that one of Ms McEnany’s former Trump administration colleagues believed her tweet was aimed directly at the QAnon community.

“From a former WH colleague of McEnany’s: “This is 100% meant to stir up the qanon crowd. Awful,’” wrote Mr Tapper.

But Ms McEnany shot back with her own clarification of the situation.

“I tweeted this revealing, bizarre quote from Joe Biden that underscores his horrific pro-choice, anti-child policies that have dehumanized life (Mexico City policy etc.) cc:@jaketapper your source should put her name on the record if she claims to know the intent of my tweets,” she responded.

Ms McEnany had a confrontational relationship with the news network while working for Mr Trump, and once refused to take a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, calling her an “activist.”

QAnon is a bizarre viral pro-Trump conspiracy theory that falsely claims the ex-president was taking on a group of Democratic pedophiles in Washington DC.

It has been labelled as a “dangerous extremist group” by the FBI, and has supporters in congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

The online conspiracy theory was well represented during the attack on the Capitol, with the arrest of high-profile QAnon figures such as the “QAnon Shaman”, whose real name is Jake Chansley.