White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday mocked the media for spending months speculating potential staff firings in the Trump administration but failing to forecast former FBI Director James Comey’s abrupt departure last week.
“The fact is as they work on the 20th palace intrigue personnel story of this young administration, they totally missed the firing of Jim Comey coming,” Conway told Fox News “MediaBuzz” host Howard Kurtz. “Where are the editors? Some days I think along with the FBI director, a lot of these editors got fired. Twitter is not an assignment editor, it’s not a source.”
“What are you actually covering? Are you covering who’s up and who’s down in the West Wing, which you would know nothing about, or are you covering what impacts Americans?” Conway added.
Conway, who spent part of last week traveling through five states, said Americans asked her about healthcare, the recent ransomware cyberattack worldwide and job creation.
The media are “passing themselves off as news reporters when they’re expressing their opinions” by focusing on select topics, creating a disconnect between “what people hear as noise and what is actually news,” Conway argued.
Conway, who was the only White House official to appear on the Sunday morning news shows after Trump’s multiple TV interviews last week and one on Fox News last night, insisted the press go rogue and report on other news.
“Somebody said, ‘Oh, we’d love to cover X, but this overshadowed it,'” Conway said. “You have a choice to make. You can be part of the sameness, or you can go and cover things that actually matter to Americans, and that’s the responsibility of everyone, is to cover the gamut of issues, all the things that the president is working on at any given time.”
