Some of the Stupidest Shit Kellyanne Conway Got Away With as Trump's Adviser

Kellyanne Conway, longtime adviser for President Trump, said Sunday that she will step away from her White House role to tend to her family. The announcement was made shortly after her 15-year-old daughter, Claudia, posted a series of tweets expressing devastation over her mother’s decision to speak at the Republican National Convention and her hopes for gaining emancipation from her parents. She also tweeted her mother’s job has “ruined her life.” (Conway’s husband and Claudia’s father, George Conway, is also stepping away from The Lincoln Project; Claudia responded to both announcements via TikTok).

Since July 2016, Kellyanne Conway has been a fixture in the Trump ecosystem. She became the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign, confidently spinning Trump’s shit into fool’s gold before the press, never hesitating to dutifully stretch the truth, obfuscate, and outright lie for her boss. While several other figures in Trumpworld have come and gone (to jail), Conway has been a loyal ride-or-die. Conway’s time in the limelight decreased substantially over the years, but she remained a dependable Trump goon until the very end.

Conway has been responsible for countless mindnumbing moments during these four years of complete and utter hell. But here are some of the most memorable ones, in case you want to be traumatized all over again:

October 2016: Kellyanne Conway says Trump must respect women because he never sexually assaulted her.

In a post-debate interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Conway expressed disappointment in Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” comments, which had recently leaked. But did she see him as a predator? Well, no, because he never grabbed her pussy: “I have to assess people based on what I see in totem,” she said. “And this is a man that I’ve been alone with many times who’s never been anything but gracious and gentleman and elevated me to the top level of his campaign the way he’s elevated women in the Trump organization because he respects women.”

February 2017: The legendary “Bowling Green Massacre”

During an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Conway defended Trump’s Muslim ban by citing the “Bowling Green Massacre,” an event that never happened.

“I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre,” Conway said. “It didn’t get covered.”

She eventually apologized for the massive misspeak a few days later.

February 2017: Conway casually, maybe sort of violates the Hatch Act by urging the American people to buy Ivanka Trump-brand clothing.

Remember when Nordstrom decided to stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s floundering fashion brand, and conservatives revolted by boycotting and canceling their Nordstrom credit cards en masse? Well, Conway suggested that we all buy Ivanka Trump’s accessories in retaliation, something she—a federal employee—is definitely not allowed to fucking do.

Naturally, nothing really came of this. She was just on TV a whole lot less often come springtime.

February 2017: Conway has no home training.

Were her shoes even off the couch?

May 2017: Conway suggests CNN’s Anderson Cooper is sexist for rolling his eyes during an interview with her.

Cooper did, in fact, roll his eyes. But that’s likely had more to do with the fact that she was being a tedious Trump troll above all else.

But she went on Fox and Friends to complain about it anyway.

“Let me tell you something,” Conway said. “Hillary Clinton is in search of sexism as a lame excuse for why her disastrous candidacy and campaign lost six months ago. I face sexism a lot of times when I show up for interviews like that.”

She added, “Could you imagine, having a male anchor on the network roll eyes at Hillary Clinton, at somebody—a female representative spokeswoman for President Obama or President Bill Clinton? I think not.”

September 2017: Conway credits her success to “thinking like a man.”

Conway was highlighted in a Time magazine feature called “Firsts: Women Who Are Changing the Word.” Conway, the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign, offered some words of wisdom as to how she got so far in the boy’s club of Republican politics: “My comfort level came in learning to think like a man and behave like a lady.” She then quoted Margaret Thatcher.

June 2018: “Commander of Cheese”

Cheese!

October 2018: Conway blames the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting on bad comedians

On October 27, 2018, an alleged white nationalist opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 and wounding six. Instead of blaming the attack on racist, anti-Semitic ideology fostered and enabled on the online communities the perpetrator frequented, Conway blamed… America’s waning religiosity, which is egged on by… comedians?

Janaury 2019: Conway asks why reporters are referring to President Trump’s dream wall as a “wall”

“Build the wall” has been Trump’s clarion call since the earliest days of his campaign, but by January 2019, Conway wondered why reporters were calling Trump’s pet project—a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico—a wall to begin with.

From Vox:

In a confusing discussion with CNN reporter Abby Phillip, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway asked why Phillip and recent CBS polls on the ongoing government shutdown kept referring to a “wall” rather than “steel slat barriers.” After nearly four years of demanding a border wall even at the cost of an unpopular government shutdown, the Trump administration now appears to wish to avoid the word “wall” at all costs.

“I’m asking why you and the polling questions, respectfully, are still saying ‘wall’ when the president said you can call it whatever you want,” Conway said.

Don’t worry, it got worse:

August 2019: Conway sings Taylor Swift in an attempt to dunk on Taylor Swift

All was quiet on the Conway front for a while, but not for long.

A couple of years into Trump’s reign, notoriously apolitical Taylor Swift went public about just how much she despises the Trump administration. When Swift accepted her MTV Video Music Award for “You Need to Calm Down,” she urged viewers to support the Equality Act, a bill meant to protect people from discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The Trump administration, predictably, didn’t approve of the Equality Act, and Conway thought that the best way to respond to Swift’s very reasonable request was to mock her by singing her own song

“If you say it on the street, that’s a knockout / If you put it in a tweet, that’s a cop-out,” Conway sang. “I love that! I mean, that basically is Washington in a nutshell.”

She added, “I would love to ask her audience if they even know what that is, [what] the Equality Act is and isn’t. She’s welcome to her opinion. I can tell you there’s a lot of poison pills in it.”

Nothing says “poison pill” like the fundamental right not to be rejected from housing because you’re trans!

October 2019: Conway loses her shit at a Washington Examiner reporter

Even the conservative Washington Examiner wasn’t off the hook after Conway spotted an article about her that referenced her Never-Trump Republican husband, George Conway.

The following is a snippet from the transcript of a conversation between Conway and reporter Caitlin Yilek:

Conway: Hey, Caitlin. Kellyanne Conway. So I just am wondering why in God’s earth you would need to mention anything about George Conway’s tweets in an article that talks about me as possibly being chief of staff. Other than it looks to me like there’s no original reporting here, you just read Twitter and other people’s stuff, which I guess is why you don’t pick up the phone when people call from the White House because if it’s not on Twitter or it’s not on cable TV, it’s not real. I’m just wondering why you would have, A — why or what ever would give you the idea that I’m, quote, caught in the middle of some of these Twitter feeds and the president of the United States, B — who would be able to tell you that except for me? We’ve never talked, as far as I know.

Yilek: We have never talked. I did cite the Bloomberg News article. And the reason I didn’t pick up the call was because it said it was from Egypt, and I called it right back. In terms of mentioning George Conway, it’s relevant context.

Conway: I know it’s just for clicks, but you’re going to have to give me, like, a journalistic reason here, especially if you admit that you just are repeating what another news source said and the president disputed that anyway. So, it’s sort of, like, doubly embarrassing. There’s no original reporting. If you’re going to call yourself a reporter, let’s see some reporting. There’s no original reporting, and then, it’s just lazy. Respectfully, of course, it’s just lazy to talk about somebody’s Twitter feed. Do you talk about other people’s spouses in your pieces, ‘cause I’ve been looking around, I haven’t learned a single thing from any of your pieces, and I’m just wondering if you routinely talk about people’s spouses.

Yilek: Uh, yes. My editor requires us to put in context about people’s families or spouses when it’s relevant.

[…]

Conway: OK, then let’s talk about your job. What is your job exactly? Is your job to rely upon derivative reporting without picking up the phone and trying to ask questions or write things that are relevant? In other words, you characterize me as being caught in the middle of something that I’m not caught in the middle of. So, why would you do that? Are you an expert on my marriage? Are you an expert on my job? Are you an expert on the way this White House works? Are you an expert on Twitter? I mean, what exactly are you an expert on that would qualify you to say, to characterize the way I feel?

Yilek: Would you like to dispute that on the record? I would be happy to put that in my story.

Conway: Nobody read your story. I’m just making the point — I’m just asking you how you do your job, and you’re telling me you don’t have to explain yourself to me? And that this is what your editor asks you to do? I’m trying to decide what that is. Does your editor ask you to characterize other people’s feelings? Because that’s weird.

November 2019: Conway calls CNN a bunch of “gossip girls.”

Does that mean that Wolf Blitzer is Dan Humphrey?

January 2020: Conway suggests that MLK would hate Trump’s impeachment

Remember impeachment? Yes, well, Conway believes that civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. would absolutely despair over the treatment Trump received when he was being impeached.

“I’ve held my opinion on it for a very long time,” Conway said. “But when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don’t think it was within Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged with bribery, extortion, high crimes, or misdemeanors.”