Kellyanne Conway hit the airwaves this morning as word has leaked out that Trump’s Communications Director Mike Dubke is the latest rat to leave the ship. Conway, who has really pulled back her on-air appearances over the past couple of months, probably felt the need to go gently into this long-drawn out Trumponian shitshow of a night, and asked for the nursery school of “news”—Fox & Friends. Asked about the news that Jared Kushner is the latest Trump administration official to reportedly warrant a prison sentence, Conway turned on her spin machine.
The fact is that Jared Kushner has said from the very beginning that he is willing do go and share any information that he has with Congress and the FBI. And as you heard general Mcmaster, as you heard secretary Kelly over this weekend say they are not concerned. Back channels like this are the regular course of business. And that's really all that we know.
I think it's very important to recognize that the president has expressed full confidence in Jared Kushner and also went on to note considerable progress and very large important portfolio that Jared oversees here at the White House. At the end of this month he will be hosting another major meeting with the heads of tech companies, for example, to really try to figure out how we can improve efficiencies and cost savings in the government.
This is followed up by Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade asking:
Do you back up the Fox News report that says it's the Russians that reached out to Jared Kushner and not the other way around. So Reuters report being wrong and what about today's New York Times report saying Kushner reached out a banker named Gorkov who is on a U.S. black list?
Now, important to note here is that his “question” is simply lying. The initial report that Kushner reached out isn’t yet considered “wrong,” and whether or not Jared or a Russian agent reached out first is at this point less important. The more important fact here is that Kushner “forgot” to mention any and all contact he had with foreign powers—when being vetted for the highest security clearances in our government. Kilmeade serves up a softball that even Conway has to sidestep.
I cannot comment on any of that because there is no reason to, frankly. We know that there are been many news reports very recently that had the facts wrong. If you go back to a couple weeks ago, you will notice that one paper in particular three times in a row relied upon information that was immediately batted down as false. This entire thing is just a rush to judgment. We have been talking about this for about 8 months.
She “cannot comment” because there’s no way she’s going to go on record about anything with this administration since it will likely change in the next 15 minutes. Conway puts together a series of fast sentences that amount to less content than a story put on rice paper and dropped in a bathtub filled with acid. Take note, Conway’s entire spin cycle works like this:
- Say “I’ve been saying this forever, this is the same fake news we have heard [insert corruption, shakeup, Russia, Trump’s lying]”
- Follow this up with ambiguous statements of sources, like newspaper articles, that have “retracted” the initial reports—never actually mentioning what was retracted, if anything at all.
- Move from there to a statement about something else that’s positive and being done [“efficiency,” “government waste be gone!”]
If pressed on your answer:
Repeat the first three steps over again but add a personal touch “I have already told you [insert pundit name, and smile] ...”