Stephen King's Message to Former White House Press Secretary Goes Viral

Stephen King attends Meet the Creators at Apple Store Soho on June 3, 2013, in New York City. He has called out former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany online.

Horror author Stephen King has criticized former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she slammed President Joe Biden's immigration policy.

Donald Trump and other Republicans have condemned Biden's border policies amid a surge in encounters at the southern border since he took office, while the incumbent president has accused Trump of deliberately attempting to make the issue worse by blocking a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year.

Immigration is bound to be a core topic of discourse when Biden and Trump face off in the first of two one-on-one debates on Thursday night. In the lead-up, a media firestorm was ignited over reports from CNN and NBC that 400 migrants hcrossed the U.S.-Mexico border with the aid of a human smuggling network linked to the terror group ISIS.

During an appearance on the Fox News panel show Outnumbered, panelist McEnany, who served in the Trump administration from April 2020 to January 2021, discussed the reports, with both networks citing anonymous U.S. officials.

However, King—who frequently criticizes the Republican politician on social media—has since accused her of lying.

Newsweek emailed spokespeople for King and McEnany for comment Thursday.

The critically acclaimed author, who wrote It and Carrie, reshared a post from McEnany on X (formerly Twitter) and wrote: "Kayleigh--that's a pack of lies."

At the time of writing, the post had been viewed 176,000 times.

In the video that McEnany shared, she was talking about the southern border during her appearance on Outnumbered.

"What a failure, what a failure. When you look at the number that has crossed the southern border including gotaways, it is over 5 million," she said while on the program. "And that's just the southwest border, so the number's higher and what's appalling to me, do we have a vetting system?

"They say we have a vetting system, it doesn't appear we do. Several women have been killed. Now you have migrants who are apparently linked to ISIS we are now looking for but here's the cherry on top of all of that data I shared with you. A White House memo that they just put out from Andrew Bates."

According to McEnany, the memo said Biden took "decisive, executive action and as a result, unlawful border encounters have plunged."

She added: "They're literally bragging today at the White House about what they have done."

McEnany drilled her point home further in the caption of her post, which reads: "The White House put out a memo today, bragging about Biden's immigration policy, saying he has taken 'decisive' action. The New York Times has also reported that Biden plans 'to go on the offensive' on immigration during the debate.

"How do you go on offense when women and girls have been killed because of your border policies?"

While she didn't specify the deaths she was referring to, since Biden became president a number of women have killed by immigrants, with the stories making the headlines. The women include Rachel Morin, who was allegedly raped and murdered by undocumented migrant Victor Martinez Hernandez in August of 2023, and Ruby Garcia, who was found dead on the side of highway U.S. 131 in Grand Rapids on March 22. Mexican national Baltazar Perez-Estrada was arrested and charged with five counts of first-degree murder.

Even though McEnany may have accused the White House of "bragging," Biden suspended asylum processing with an executive order to "gain control of the border" on June 5.

According to the Homeland Security Department, arrests for illegal border crossings have dropped more than 40 percent during the three weeks asylum processing has been suspended. Border Patrol's seven-day daily average arrests have fallen below 2,400, the lowest number since 17 January 2021, per Homeland Security.

Border arrests had decreased 25 percent as of last week according to Biden, and have now fallen further. Authorities say the seven-day daily average of arrests in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector was just under 600 on Tuesday, down from just under 1,200 on June 2.

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