Donald Trump again tweeted an attack on the husband of one of his top aides Wednesday morning. “George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted,” Trump ranted. “I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!”
George Conway has emerged as a public critic of Trump, while Kellyanne Conway’s main role in the White House seems to be shamelessly lying in defense of Trump on television. There’s a lot that’s just fascinating here: George is not just a run-of-the-mill Republican, but one who actively took part in the efforts to take down President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Conways first came to Trump’s attention when George successfully argued to keep the Trump name on a building they lived in. The fact that he has become a Trump critic is in itself noteworthy.
Then there’s the substance of the tweet. Far from being jealous of his wife’s success—success that is not in any obvious policy or strategic area but, again, seems to consist of staying on Trump’s good side by being willing to defend him on the air no matter what—on election night 2016, the Washington Post reported of George that “Tears streamed down his face, and he shouted to anyone who would listen: ‘She did it! She did it! She made history.’” At Kellyanne’s moment of triumph, George was proud, not jealous.
The job that Trump claims not to have given him? When George Conway announced in June 2017 that he was withdrawing himself from contention for a Justice Department job, he said that “I am profoundly grateful to the President and to the Attorney General for selecting me to serve in the Department of Justice”—and there was no “he wasn’t offered the job” pushback from the White House, even though he hadn’t been formally nominated. Instead, George stayed in New York taking care of the couple’s four children and continuing to earn millions of dollars a year as a partner in a top law firm while Kellyanne worked for Trump in Washington, D.C. Again, he looks supportive of her career—just not of the lies her boss tells or his unconstitutional actions.
Loser? “Partner at a major law firm making millions of dollars a year, who has won before the Supreme Court” is not usually the kind of resume Donald Trump sneers at. And if George Conway is at this point a husband from hell, it sure seems like it’s because his inability to be silent about Trump came between him and his wife.
Conway responded: “You seem determined to prove my point. Good for you! #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder”