The bizarre marriage of Kellyanne and George Conway took another strange turn today when Kellyanne Conway took to Fox Business Network to let the world know she’s on Team Trump. As for Team Conway – she didn’t want to talk much about that but she hinted at trouble.
Kellyanne Conway spent more than 11 minutes discussing the situation with Trump sycophant Maria Bartiromo. Tomorrow, we learned, Bartiromo will conduct another fawning interview with Trump.
You’d think that a loving wife of a husband trashing her boss would have said something like, “I wish he would stop because that is so not who I am, not who I have known him to be, but he’s my husband and I love him.” Instead, she stopped just short of bashing him outright.
Referring to Trump’s Twitter attack on Mr. Conway, Bartiromo asked, “Your boss calling your husband a wack job. What’s going on?”
Conway immediately took Trump’s side. “Well, my husband also has been very critical of the president publicly, which is unlike him, just because he’s traditionally been a very private person.” She added that he had not tweeted at all in 2016, “So this is new.”
She moved on to suggest a grudge against her husband. “What also is new is not supporting the agenda of the president and my work there. Because when George took himself out of contention for a top job in the Department of Justice, almost two years ago now, he put out a public statement that many in the media refuse to cover now, which is we’ve decided as a family it’s not the right time for both of us to have big jobs in the federal government. That he’ll stay in the private sector and that he still supports the president, the work of the administration, and of course his quote, wonderful wife.”
Conway gave props to Trump while suggesting that she refrained from criticizing her husband out of principle: “I appreciate the president defending what he thinks is unfairness, I’ll leave that up to him. I was raised, though, in a household of strong Italian Catholic women who taught me that you air grievances like that in private, so it is very surprising to see it be so public.”
She continued, “I don’t talk much about this publicly because my first duty is and will always be the protection of these four school-age children, so I prefer not to address it, and if that means people are mischaracterizing me or my boss, or even George’s tweets or they're cherrypicking— “
Bartiromo interrupted to ask the obvious question. “You’re saying these grievances should be discussed in private, and yet he’s out tweeting. Yesterday he tweeted, ‘You’re nuts.’ ‘You are nuts,’ to the president. He’s called him lots of names over the years. So what does your husband say when you say ‘George let’s leave this private and not go on Twitter?'”
“You can ask George that, but I certainly have had those conversations,” Conway said sharply.
She then attacked the media for covering their relationship – even as she was willingly going on TV to discuss it: “I think the media is getting into a very dangerous area, though, in discussing people’s marriages which is not what’s been tweeted about. “
That is, unless you’re discussing the Clinton’s marriage, which Conway thinks is fair game. Also, her husband was instrumental in the Clinton impeachment and has admitted tipping off reporter Michael Isikoff about Ken Starr’s investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Predictably, Bartiromo didn’t mention that.
So Conway continued by complaining about reporters reporting on her “private life, not my professional life.” She suggested that since her husband is not Robert Mueller or Rod Rosenstein, his tweets are not newsworthy. “I don’t know when the feminists are going to write the story about the unusual situation of a man getting power through his wife, but that’s what we have here,” she groused. It was a distinct echo of Trump’s attack on her husband as “Mr. Kellyanne Conway” who is “VERY jealous of his wife’s success.”
Of course, his wife’s position is exactly why George Conway’s tweeted criticisms of Trump are so newsworthy. They'd be much less so if he were just spouting off about, say, Brexit or even the Green New Deal. But he’s calling Trump mentally unfit for office at the same time that she serves as a senior adviser to said unfit person. What respectable news organization wouldn’t cover such a situation?
Kellyanne Conway continued defending Trump’s attack on her husband, calling it “protective” of her. “And that’s what people really should take from this,” she said. “I’m not being asked to choose between my marriage and my job. Donald Trump, the president has never made me feel that way.”
Near the end of the interview, Conway bizarrely claimed that she will not step down from her job because she’s some kind of real feminist. “Certainly, certainly,” George has asked her to leave the job, she said, “But what message would that send to the feminists everywhere who pretend they’re independent thinkers and men don’t make decisions for them? They can talk it and I can walk it.”
Bartiromo actually pushed back, saying the situation is “so odd” and questioning whether or not it’s “a schtick.”
It's pretty obviously not schtick. Signaling that there’s real tension in the relationship, Kellyanne Conway said, “For me, I’m business as usual because - and I - again, that comes after being mother to these four incredible children who are always my first concern.”
Watch the latest installment in As The Conway Marriage Turns below, from Fox Business Network’s March 21, 2019 Morning with Maria.