White House adviser Kellyanne Conway escalated an attack on Washington Examiner reporter Caitlin Yilek after the outlet published Conway’s remarks, which were made in an aggressive and threatening call with the reporter.
Conway belittled Yilek on Friday morning, saying, “She’s not like the rest of you, she’s not here at the White House doing the beat, out here asking questions. She doesn’t pick up the phone.”
Conway denied threatening to investigate Yilek’s personal life in the call with the journalist, a breaking news reporter who frequently covers the East Wing.
[Read: Transcript of telephone call between Kellyanne Conway and Caitlin Yilek]
“If I threaten someone, you’ll know it,” Conway told a group of reporters on the White House driveway.
“Dig in? Who cares? You don’t even know her name. You guys don’t even — Well, now you know her name,” she said.
On Wednesday, Conway called Yilek to dispute a short news story about Conway’s name reportedly being floated as a possible White House chief of staff. The article reported that Conway has “been in the middle of Trump’s barbs with her husband.” George Conway has called for Trump’s impeachment, and Trump called him a “stone-cold loser” and “the husband from hell.“
In the phone conversation, Conway called herself a “powerful woman” and suggested Yilek’s personal life would be fair game if her relationship with George merited a mention in news reports.
Conway said on the call, “Listen, if you’re going to cover my personal life, then we’re welcome to do the same around here. If it has nothing to do with my job, which it doesn’t, that’s obvious, then we’re either going to expect you to cover everybody’s personal life or we’re going to start covering them over here.”
Conway released a lengthy statement Thursday night defending her conduct.
On Friday, Conway attacked the premise that she had mistakenly considered the phone call off the record.
“I didn’t say the call was off the record because I could care less,” Conway said. “Why the Washington Examiner came out and ‘Blee ha blah dah blah dah blah, off the record’ — what are they even talking about?”
Recounting the call, Conway said, “I said, ‘Have we ever spoken?’ No. And then I said, ‘Why would you do that? There are millions of ways to describe me. Why did you choose that way to describe me? Why are you derivatively writing what another outlet wrote? Where’s your original reporting?’ She had no answer for that. She still has no answer for that … Lazy! So I was just asking why would you — and I never raised my — I just said, why would you?”
When reporters pressed on whether she threatened Yilek, Conway said, “Don’t use the word threaten and don’t use the word investigate and stop being so silly. Honestly, stop being so silly.”
