Is it 2016 again? Kellyanne Conway (soon to be a counselor in the White House) is back in Trump damage control mode as if incoming Press Secretary Sean Spicer doesn’t exist. (Maybe it’s a two-person job.) On Monday, Conway hit the pavement in response to Meryl Streep’s criticism at the Golden Globes regarding Trump, and of course, the man himself already lashed out on Twitter and flat-out denied that he had publicly mocked a disabled reporter despite visual evidence to the contrary.
In addition to his Twitter tantrum, Trump also spoke with the NY Times to state, if “Meryl Streep and others could read my mind … I did no such thing.” Conway would like to take this concept even further. While speaking with Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day, Conway believes that people should read Trump’s heart and completely disregard what comes from his mouth:
“That is not what he did and he has said that 1,000 times. Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt? Why is everything taken at face value? You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart, you always want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”
Conway also popped over to Fox News and forgot the definition of irony while calling out Streep. “I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep’s is … inciting people’s worst instincts,” Conway said — while seemingly forgetting that her boss once said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in NYC, and no one would care. Yet Conway persisted against Streep: “When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I didn’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him.'”
.@KellyannePolls: I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep’s is inciting people’s worst instincts pic.twitter.com/QjITaedKnV
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 9, 2017
In this extended Fox and Friends clip, Conway lectured Streep for not also giving “a shoutout” to the disabled white man who was tortured by four black suspects who yelled racial epithets and anti-Trump statements. As Cuomo explained in the top clip, comparing Trump’s “imitation” of a disabled reporter to actual acts in a violent Facebook Live video is a flawed analogy.