Kellyanne Conway would like to set the record straight: Her marriage is off-limits.
No ‘buts,’ no exceptions. What’s more: Conway would like you to know that her relationship with her husband, a lawyer with a massive social media following who uses said following to regularly and publicly attack President Trump, has nothing to do with her career or her success, she told a Washington Examiner reporter this week.
And by “told,” I mean verbally berated, harassed, and threatened — a common response reporters have come to expect from the president’s White House counselor. The interaction, recorded and documented by the Washington Examiner’s Caitlin Yilek, began after Yilek wrote an article about the rumor that Trump is weighing whether to pick Kellyanne Conway as his next chief of staff.
In the piece, Yilek noted a well-known fact: George Conway likes to publicly feud with Trump. It was this admission that Conway found unacceptable.
“So I just am wondering why in God’s earth you would need to mention anything about George Conway’s tweets in an article that talks about me as possibly being chief of staff,” she told Yilek during a phone call. “Let me tell you something, from a powerful woman. Don’t pull the crap where you’re trying to undercut another woman based on who she’s married to. He gets his power through me, if you haven’t noticed. Not the other way around.”
“Listen, if you’re going to cover my personal life, then we’re welcome to do the same around here,” Conway continued. “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.”
A few things are clear. First, Kellyanne Conway knows how to nurse a grudge. Second, she wants to go down in the history books as a self-made, independent, successful woman. And third, while she might think of herself as a “powerful woman,” Conway is deeply sensitive when it comes to her very public, very contentious marriage.
It’s hard to blame her. To have the world watch her husband slowly dismantle the career she’s built must be tiring and perhaps a bit humiliating. Conway was, after all, the first woman to manage a winning presidential campaign. This means a lot to her but nothing to her husband, who despises the fact that it was Trump she helped. With every tweet, George Conway goes out of his way to discredit the thing his wife helped build. And in doing so, he gives Trump’s opponents an excuse to do the same.
George Conway is of course allowed to be critical of the president. But he’s not just critical. He’s personal. He takes every policy, statement, and action of the president and uses it to psychoanalyze and characterize Donald Trump, the man. Trump’s erratic ego certainly isn’t off limits, but George Conway doesn’t limit his criticisms to just Trump. He’s made it clear that Trump is the captain of a flailing administration that’s just as “narcissistic,” “racist,” and “moronic” as he is — an administration that just so happens to include his wife.
Given all of this, Conway’s desire to keep her private life private is understandable. But she’s taking her frustration out on the wrong person. It isn’t Yilek’s fault, or the Washington Examiner’s, that the world knows about her conflicted marriage. It’s her husband’s. Perhaps she should try yelling at him.
Conway wants respect but doesn’t know how to earn it. She thinks of herself as an icon, a strong and “powerful” woman, but spends her free time insulting, threatening, and taking out her marital frustration on those who dare to mention it. That’s not the mark of a resilient, dignified woman. It’s the mark of a tired, weak woman who’s had enough.
[Read: Transcript of telephone call between Kellyanne Conway and Caitlin Yilek]
