White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Thursday slammed The Lincoln Project, the conservative anti-Trump group co-founded by her husband, conservative attorney George Conway.
She made the remarks during an at-times testy interview on Fox News with host Harris Faulkner, who asked her to address this week’s public feud between President Donald Trump and The Lincoln Project over a new ad released by the Republican group. Faulkner also quoted from George Conway’s op-ed published Wednesday in The Washington Post in which he said that Trump’s “narcissism” renders him unable to perform his duties as president under the Constitution and that “he can only act for himself, not for the nation.”
Faulkner added a disclaimer that “this is not about your husband, this is not about your marriage. This is about that group. It just so happens that George Conway wrote this op-ed today.”
“It certainly is about my husband or you would have quoted other people in the group,” Conway fired back.
She went on to criticize the political strategists who run The Lincoln Project as having failed where she had succeeded in electing a president.
They “never achieved what I achieved, which is success as a presidential campaign manager. They all failed,” she said.
The group, founded by a number of “never Trump” Republicans, released a blistering ad Monday targeting the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as having created a “weaker, sicker and poorer” United States. Titled “Mourning in America,” it was a grim take on former President Ronald Reagan’s optimistic 1984 “Morning in America” campaign ad.
The ad prompted a visceral midnight Twitter reaction from Trump that drew significant publicity for the group. Following Trump’s insult-laden tirade, the PAC said it saw its biggest fundraising day yet.
Trump had invoked the Conways’ marriage himself in the four-tweet blast. “I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad,” he wrote. He labeled the group’s founders as “losers” who “failed badly” on various campaigns.
Asked if Trump would do better to “ignore them” than tweet the way he did ― and if he’s alienating moderates with this behavior ― Conway said, “That’s great advice. I sure do.”
“But the president isn’t ignoring them,” Faulkner interjected.
“Once in a while he doesn’t,” she said, claiming he wanted to “expose” its members “who act like they are so dignified and holier-than-thou than everyone when nobody ever says what their track record is.”
Watch a clip of Conway’s interview with Fox News below.