“Taking a sarcastic comment and running with negative headlines is the definition of taking something out of context, so I believe those answers are very much in sync,” Ms. McEnany told reporters on Saturday. She then effected another shift: “Millions and millions of Americans tune in each day to hear directly from President Trump and appreciate his leadership, unprecedented coronavirus response and confident outlook for America’s future.”

That Ms. McEnany would consider a pandemic that has killed more than 50,000 Americans at least partly through the lens of political messaging seems a function of Mr. Trump’s upending of the traditional White House press secretary’s role, from public interpreter of policy to campaign pit brawler. Since taking the job April 7, Ms. McEnany has attended only one of Mr. Trump’s public coronavirus briefings; as of this week, her White House office voice mail wasn’t set up. But she appears regularly on Fox News and Twitter, bashing the news media and defending the president on his coronavirus response, while other Republicans increasingly decline to do so.

Ms. McEnany, whose 32nd birthday on April 18 was noted on air by the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, has spent virtually all her working life inside Trumpworld. Her time at Harvard overlapped with her star turn on cable in 2016, where she transformed herself from an obscure Republican opinion writer to a pro-Trump contributor on CNN.

But she was using racist language similar to Mr. Trump’s long before the formal launch of his political career — or hers. Eight years ago, a 24-year-old Ms. McEnany leapt at the Twitter hashtag #ObamaTVShows to offer “How I Met Your Brother — Never mind, forgot he’s still in that hut in Kenya.”

Scottie Nell Hughes, another Trump surrogate during the 2016 campaign who often teamed up with Ms. McEnany on CNN, seemed to see that streak as a plus.

“The president wants to see a fighter,” said Ms. Hughes, who now works at Russia Today, a Russian state TV outlet also known as RT.

Ms. McEnany declined to discuss her role or background for the record, although she said in a brief telephone call, “I want the truth about me and my character to be out there.”