George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, slammed President Trump during a rare television appearance ahead of the first public impeachment hearing while noting that he “frankly” didn’t “want to be on television.”
Conway’s appearance on MSNBC took place shortly before William Taylor, the top diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, were set to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday morning.
“What the presidential oath is, is — and frankly, it goes to almost any public office, any public office — is you’re taking on the obligation to act on behalf of the people and not act on behalf of yourself, and, again, that’s the problem with Trump. Trump always puts himself first,” Conway said as he explained his belief that the Founders Fathers took oaths more seriously than politicians do now.
He referenced Trump’s initial decision to host next year’s G-7 at one of his own properties in Florida — which he later changed — and the Mueller investigation as examples of Trump acting on his own behalf.
“[The Mueller investigation] didn’t have to be about Trump,” Conway continued. “But because he’s so self-obsessed, it became about Trump because he tried to quash the investigation. If he had just shut up about it and not tweeted ‘witch hunt’ 600 times and not just played golf for two years, there wouldn’t have been a whole volume two of the Mueller investigation showing that he had obstructed justice.”
He added, “And the point there is he was trying to stop an investigation that was looking into what Russia had done to the United States. His duty as president was to stop what Russia was doing to the United States.”
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace then asked, “What brings you here today?”
Conway responded by explaining that he doesn’t watch much television before adding, “I don’t, frankly, want to be on television.”
