With the White House press secretary’s office reportedly changing hands, the speculation machine is already spinning, and American Thinker has offered its own nominee: Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.
In a blog post published October 18, columnist Noel S. Williams writes that President Trump has said there are many qualified candidates to replace the departing press secretary, and proceeds to make the case that MacCallum is the ideal one. The piece is a blend of praise for her interviewing chops and a running commentary on her appearance that is likely to raise eyebrows — and which the author seems to anticipate.
An argument built on more than credentials
Williams does not hide the ball. The post opens its case by noting that MacCallum is a woman — “and they are good at talking,” the columnist writes, crediting years of what the piece calls practice at back-chat with “patriarchal superiors.” From there it moves directly to her looks, calling her “quite lovely indeed,” and then anticipates the objection: that emphasizing physical appearance runs afoul of modern HR norms, which the author describes as “wearisome” and “soul-destroying.”
The columnist’s answer is to reach for employment law. Williams argues one could “persuasively argue” that physical characteristics amount to a bona fide occupational qualification, or BFOQ, for a role like this one. The reasoning offered is that the press secretary’s job is fundamentally promotional — selling the president’s agenda and shaping the topics that occupy the public square — and that a public-facing position of that kind is best served by someone who doesn’t project an “off-putting aura.” It’s a contention the piece presents as a practical point rather than a legal brief, and it’s the sort of claim that tends to draw immediate pushback from anyone who has sat through a compliance training.
Whether or not readers buy the BFOQ framing, Williams is careful to say the argument doesn’t rest on appearance alone.
The substantive case
Beyond “lookism,” as the column puts it, the author describes MacCallum as smart and determined, thoroughly versed in the issues, and a proven tough interviewer. The phrase Williams uses is that she “can give what she takes and then some” — a compliment about holding her own in adversarial exchanges rather than folding.
The columnist also dwells on style. MacCallum, according to the piece, manages all of it with a charming, disarming, and pleasing demeanor — so much so that the targets of her tougher questions may not register the takedown until it’s already landed. That quality, the argument goes, is precisely what a briefing room demands.
A revolving door, run in reverse
The column’s structural hook is a bit of trivia about the talent pipeline between the podium and the cable desk. Williams ticks off a list of conservative women who served as White House press secretary and later landed at Fox News: Kayleigh McEnany, Karoline Leavitt, Dana Perino, and Sarah Huckabee. The piece notes that Leavitt’s Fox debut is still pending, and then asks why the revolving door can’t turn the other way — why the network can’t supply the next press secretary rather than receive the last one.
That framing places MacCallum in a lineage the author clearly admires, though the column’s language for that lineage — “conservative lovelies” — is of a piece with its earlier emphasis on appearance. The through-line Williams draws is a combination of beauty and brains, which the piece says is what a conservative audience deserves in the person standing at the podium, facing what it describes as “screechy questions” from a press pool the author dismisses in considerably less flattering terms. The column closes on that note of combat: the ability to speak plainly, it argues, matters to the republic now more than ever, and “we deserve Martha in the House.”
It is, in other words, less a personnel memo than a statement of preference from one corner of the conservative media ecosystem — and an unusually candid one about the criteria it is applying.
What the piece assumes
The column treats the vacancy itself as settled fact without elaboration, referring to the incumbent’s exit and to the president’s comments about the depth of the candidate pool. It doesn’t cite any reporting on a shortlist, doesn’t name other contenders, and offers no indication that MacCallum has been approached, is interested, or has been discussed inside the administration. Her nomination exists, in the piece, entirely as the columnist’s suggestion.
Nor does the post address what a Fox News anchor’s move to the podium would mean for the network, for the briefing room’s relationship with the press corps, or for the tradition — informal but durable — of keeping the two institutions at some distance. Those questions are left for others. What American Thinker has produced instead is a short, blunt brief for a candidate, arguing that the job rewards exactly the combination of combativeness and camera-ready ease that its pick has spent years displaying on cable.
Whether the White House sees it that way is another matter entirely. For now, the column stands as one outlet’s opening bid in a conversation that will be conducted mostly out of public view — and as a reminder that when a press secretary’s chair opens up, the commentary about who should fill it arrives well before any announcement does.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/how-about-this-lady-for-white-house-press-secretary/