Trump Jr versus George Conway: You're a disgrace who's embarrassing your family

What better way to wind down the news week than with the Trump/Conway tensions finally erupting into all-out war in public view?

I mean, given Don Jr’s growing electoral profile and George’s growing pundit profile, this fight could conceivably last another decade. Imagine how acidic George will be on Inauguration Day 2025, hosting his own MSNBC show as Trump Jr is sworn in as president.

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This is also the first time, I believe, that Conway has acknowledged criticism on Twitter of the terrible position he’s put Kellyanne in.

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TrumpWorld had stayed away from engaging with Conway to this point, probably as a favor to Kellyanne and possibly following the lead of the president, who’s been conspicuously and uncharacteristically restrained on the subject. But now that Trump Jr is in the fray, here comes Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale to pile on:

The fight’s getting nastier as the day drags on, with George having retweeted this:

Hoo boy. We’ll see if POTUS addresses the matter this weekend. Vanity Fair claims that Trump has addressed it in private with Kellyanne as part of a story about the Conways’ … strained relationship:

According to three sources close to George, his relationship with Kellyanne has, not surprisingly, become increasingly distant as impeachment has gained steam. “He tells people she’s in a cult,” a Republican who has spoken frequently with George told me. “It’s not going to get better until she’s cast out of the cult,” another person close to George said. Sources say George loves Kellyanne and wants the marriage to survive. He’s told people that if Kellyanne leaves the White House, they can make it work, a friend of George’s told me. “He’s going through a tough time,” a friend said…

Inside the White House, Trump is frustrated by George’s attacks, a Republican close to the administration told me. Trump has blamed Kellyanne for giving her husband a platform to attack him. “George gets all his power from you,” Trump told her recently, according to a Republican briefed on the conversation.

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Supposedly Jared Kushner wants Trump to cut her loose, although that may be a byproduct of longstanding antagonism between Kellyanne and the Kushners. I don’t know what good it would do at this point. George has a big following on Twitter now, more than three-quarters of a million followers. Frequent Twitter users tend to grow their follower numbers over time, not lose them. So long as George is delivering 24/7 Trump rants, he’ll continue to have lots of anti-Trumpers reading regardless of where Kellyanne is employed.

Whether he’ll still be getting TV invites once his wife is no longer senior advisor to the president is, of course, a different question.

By the way, while Kellyanne was busy yesterday strategizing over how to keep the president from being impeached, here’s what her better half was up to:

Yes, that’s Kathy Griffin on the floor in the foreground. And that’s E. Jean Carroll, who’s accused Trump of attempted rape, behind her. Next to her would be left-wing economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman. Next to him is Hillary Clinton henchman Philippe Reines. And allll the way over on the right, partially obscured by Soledad O’Brien, is … Mr. Kellyanne Conway.

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He’s going to turn socialist before this is over, isn’t he?

One point in closing. I see lots of righties knocking him for undermining his wife’s career, which is fair enough, but I don’t agree with the frequent follow-on claim that it’s sexist for the media to pay him attention. I’ve made the point before but let me repeat it: If George were the presidential advisor and Kellyanne were the former Federalist Society bigwig turned partner at one of the country’s most elite corporate law firms who’d built a huge online following by tweeting that George’s boss is a dangerous psychopath, then yeah, I do think that subject would come up in interviews with George. “Your wife tweeted repeatedly today that the president has numerous personality disorders that are putting the fate of mankind at risk. Any reaction?” And I also suspect that if Kellyanne had attracted 750,000 followers by hammering the president every day, any suggestion that she owed every one of those followers to her husband would itself be seen as highly sexist. It’s undeniably true that George Conway would have drawn little interest for his political commentary if not for the curiosity factor inherent in his marriage to Kellyanne, but it’s also undeniably true that he wouldn’t have built anywhere near the following he has if not for the fact that the substance of his criticism has resonated with Never Trumpers and Resistance types. You can take Kellyanne’s side in this clusterfark without dousing it in nonsense about sexism.

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David Strom 4:40 PM | October 07, 2024
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