Kellyanne Conway Is Back on the Air and Still Doing All the Same Nonsense
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway had a relatively low media profile for a few months, since she was busy mismanaging the White House response to the opioid crisis. But now she's back in front of the camera and in her sweet spot, saying things like James Comey can't be trusted because he threw the 2016 election to her boss, Donald Trump. On Sunday, Conway appeared on CNN to talk about how mean everyone was being to Trump's rejected-Goodfellas-extra-turned-lawyer, Michael Cohen. Host Dana Bash took the opportunity to ask Conway about her husband, George Conway, a lawyer himself, who has been tweeting criticisms the president.
Conway's response? "He writes a lot of things that are also supportive and a lot of things about corgis and the Philadelphia Eagles and sports too." She then went on a tangent about Hillary Clinton, after making a show of refusing to say her name, and told Bash that she was shocked that CNN would stoop so low as to ask about someone's partner. She then tells Bash that this is a "cross the Rubicon moment," saying:
You brought him into this, so this is gonna be fun moving forward, Dana. We're now going to talk about other people's spouses and significant others just because they either work in the White House or. at CNN. Are we going to do that? Because you just went there. CNN just went there.
It's been said before, but the Trump administration excels at gaslighting, trying to make their opponents second guess themselves by turning any accusation back at them. That Conway tries to paint herself as someone with integrity and a sense of boundaries is a perfect example. And it's effective because she understands that the people she's arguing against are more likely than she is to actually have some kind of ethical or moral standard—or at least, again unlike her, they're invested in looking like they have those standards. This is of course Conway's one real trick. She comes to CNN and spends the majority of her time saying how dare anyone at CNN ask her any questions as though she had consented to sit there for an interview. Then she suggests what CNN should be talking about, like Hillary Clinton and her husband's tweets about corgis.
Of course, Trump flunkies like Conway and Stephen Miller have nothing of substance to add to any topic or conversation. Conway in particular sees these interviews as opportunities to lash out at the media and journalism in general. Fortunately, there's an effective solution to this problem: stop putting Kellyanne Conway on TV. Networks aren't under any obligation to give her a platform, particularly when her only two modes are to deflect and declare war on whichever network made the bad decision to let her on.
