President Donald Trump's former campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany has been tapped to take over Stephanie Grisham's role as the White House press secretary.

The announcement on Tuesday by the White House was met with criticism because Ms McEnany's earlier statements about the president's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

A video circulated first by CNN's Andrew Kaczynski showing Ms McEnany on Fox Business on 25 February where she heaped praise for the president keeping Covid-19 out of the country.

"We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here, and isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?"

This 30-second clip does not show the entire context of Ms McEnany's statement, but earlier in the Fox show it was mentioned how Mr Trump shut down travel from China to prevent the spread of the virus.

"A Trump campaign spokesman called me to say the comments were solely in context of the travel ban from China to argue Trump wasn't going to let coronavirus come here from China," CNN's Mr Kaczynski reported.

At the time, experts estimated thousands of people were infected with the virus in the US.

Since her statement, more than 380,000 Americans have tested positive for the novel virus and 12,021 have died.

Ms McEnany also tweeted against former Vice President Joe Biden's response to the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic while in the Obama administration on 13 March. At the time, she said the president's response was better when handling the coronavirus based on numbers.

"This happened in America: 60.8 MILLION infected, 274,304 hospitalised, 12,469 died."

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Her numbers come from the CDC, which estimated the number of people who were infected, hospitalised, and died from the virus over a one-year period.

"By contrast, President @realDonaldTrump has led, taking unprecedented action to stop the coronavirus & protect Americans," she added.

But her comparison has not aged well as the coronavirus death toll is anticipated to surpass the Swine Flu's year-long death toll this week.

Another controversial statement that has followed Ms McEnany was she previously claimed President Barack Obama went golfing following Daniel Pearl's beheading.

The Wall Street Journal journalist was kidnapped and beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. At the time, Mr Obama was a state senator, not the president.

Ms McEnany, 31, graduated from Harvard Law School and has since been a frequent spokesperson for Mr Trump and his campaign on national television.

The White House has not detailed if her role as White House press secretary would entail daily press briefings. Ms Grisham, who took the role over Sarah Sanders in June 2019, rarely appeared on television.