White House and CNN clash over Kellyanne Conway’s ‘credibility’

Hunter Walker
·White House Correspondent

Top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on CNN Tuesday afternoon, hours after the network doubled down on reports that it declined to have her on-air last weekend due to questions about her credibility.

CNN’s relationship with the president’s counselor was first called into question by a New York Times report that claimed the network declined to have her as a guest on Sunday, in part due to “serious questions about her credibility.” Conway disputed that account in a Monday tweet in which she said family commitments kept her out of the studios for the Sunday shows. CNN’s communications team fired back with a tweet of its own that said the network’s premier Sunday show, “State of the Union,” “passed” after the White House “offered” Conway as a guest.

The questions about Conway’s reputation came after she referred to the “Bowling Green Massacre,” a terrorist attack that never happened, in multiple interviews in which she defended President Trump’s travel ban. Conway later claimed she “misspoke” and said she was referring to a failed plot hatched by Iraqi nationals living in Bowling Green, Ky. She also faced criticism for defending the White House’s false claims about the crowd size at Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

At the White House briefing on Tuesday, Yahoo News asked press secretary Sean Spicer about CNN’s reported problems with Conway and whether the Trump administration would be “willing to offer alternative representatives to networks that refuse to work with specific spokespeople.” Spicer described Conway as “a very trusted aide of the president” and claimed that CNN denied that it had questioned her credibility.

“Frankly, I think that my understanding is they retracted that. They’ve walked that back or denied it, however you want to put it. I don’t care,” Spicer said of CNN, adding, “But I think Kellyanne is a very trusted aide of the president. … Any characterization otherwise is insulting.”

He continued by saying if the networks “choose not to work with someone, that’s up to them. But I think we’re going to continue to put out key leaders of this administration, including Kellyanne, that can articulate the president’s policies and agenda.”

CNN’s communications team responded to Spicer with a statement noting the network never rejected the report that it questioned Conway’s credibility.

“CNN was clear, on the record, about our concerns about Kellyanne Conway’s credibility, to the New York Times and others. We have not ‘retracted’ nor ‘walked back’ those comments. Those are the facts,” CNN’s tweet said.

Conway did not respond to a request for comment on the spat. However, in spite of CNN’s public concerns about Conway, she did make a previously scheduled appearance on one of the network’s shows, “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” on Tuesday afternoon. Yahoo News reached out to Tapper to ask if he shared the network’s concerns about Conway’s credibility and, if so, why he decided to invite her on. Tapper, who also hosts the network’s main Sunday broadcast, forwarded the question to a CNN spokesperson, who did not immediately respond.

Trump and his team have consistently complained that the media is biased against them. The president and his aides have had a particularly tense relationship with CNN, which Trump has dubbed “fake news,” since the network reported on the existence of an unverified dossier compiled by a former British intelligence official during the election. The dossier asserted that the Russian government has compromising information on the president.

Conway’s lengthy interview with Tapper came almost exactly two hours after the briefing on Tuesday. They did not discuss the earlier spat between Spicer and CNN’s communications team. However, Tapper aggressively pressed Conway on a number of the latest controversies dogging the Trump administration. He pointed to the White House’s “false” claim that the media ignores many terror attacks, and to Trump’s untrue assertion earlier in the day that the U.S. murder rate is the highest in 47 years.

Tapper also repeatedly grilled Conway on Trump’s continued attacks on the media’s credibility.

“Facts are stubborn things. And to say that we’re not reporting something that happens not to be true — and therefore we’re not to be trusted — that’s a problem,” Tapper said.

The CNN host also said the administration has “little regard, day in and day out, for facts, for truth, [and] … calls us ‘fake news’ for stories that they don’t like.”

Conway responded by saying she doesn’t believe that CNN is “fake news.” However, she dismissed what she described as “palace intrigue stories” that have appeared in the press. She also said reporters sometimes make mistakes of their own.

Updated, 4:53 p.m.: This story was updated with details from Conway’s interview.

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