Senior White House “counselor” and Donald Trump sycophant Kellyanne Conway had an illuminating exchange today with Andrew Feinberg, a White House reporter for Breakfast Media. Feinberg had asked Conway to explain Trump’s barrage of racist Tweets demeaning the four Democratic Congresswomen whom he has alternately declared should “go back” to their countries, are “pro-terrorist,” and “hate America.”
Conway’s response was to demand Feinberg’s ethnicity, which she apparently considered a necessary prerequisite to answering his question.
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Andrew Feinberg, a White House reporter for Breakfast Media, a website about politics and technology, asked Conway, "If the president was not telling these four congresswomen to return to their supposed countries of origin, to which countries was he referring?"
Conway paused and then asked him, "What's your ethnicity?"
"Why is that relevant?" Feinberg replied.
"Because I'm asking a question. My ancestors are from Ireland and Italy," Conway shot back.
Demanding that a reporter describe their “ethnicity” in response to a legitimate question about this president’s actions would be egregious enough. But because Feinberg happens to be Jewish, it carries with it another, even uglier, level of import.
Asked later about his reaction to Conway’s remark, Feinberg himself stated that he did not believe that Conway was being intentionally anti-Semitic. But Feinberg was hardly an unknown quantity to Conway, having covered the White House beat for two years, so it’s probably safe to say that she was well aware that Feinberg was, in fact, Jewish.
The incident was recorded, below.
Note that this was not a "rhetorical" question directed to Feinberg. It was an explicit demand for an answer before Conway was willing to respond to his question.
Conway later issued a Tweet explaining her reason for demanding Feinberg’s ethnicity.
We are all from somewhere else “originally”. I asked the question to answer the question and volunteered my own ethnicity: Italian and Irish. Like many, I am proud of my ethnicity, love the USA & grateful to God to be an American[.]
That explanation would be more convincing if it was not being used to defend Trump’s comments, which express the exact opposite sentiments.