Once again, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared on CNN for a lengthy and contentious interview, and once again that lengthy and contentious interview was a total shitshow.
This particular time around, however, took an even more heated turn than usual when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer directly asked about her husband, outspoken Trump critic George Conway.
Blitzer wanted to ask the Trump aide one last question Thursday morning about her husband, who spent the entire day at MSNBC providing on-air analysis and criticizing the GOP’s “incoherent” defense of the president.
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“I just have a final question, a sensitive question, and it’s a political question, it’s a substantive question,” Blitzer warily asked. “I don’t want to talk about your marriage. I know that there are issues there.”
Before he could get to the question, Conway immediately pounced on Blitzer’s suggestion about her marriage.
“Did you just say there are issues there?” she exclaimed. “You don’t want to talk about—why would you say that?!”
Blitzer eventually pointed out that while he personally didn’t want to talk about their marriage, he wanted to get Conway’s reaction to her husband’s criticism. Conway, meanwhile, continued to push back at the very notion that Blitzer was questioning her about her husband.
“So before you play the clip which I haven’t seen. Why—why are you doing that?” Conway seethed, prompting the CNN anchor to note that her husband is a “legal scholar” now famous for his criticisms of the president.
“And the relevance is, and, come on—wait for it—drum roll—and he’s married to me?” Conway shot back, causing Blitzer to add: “He happens to be married to you.”
The senior Trump adviser felt Blitzer’s remarks were “bizarre” before she tried to pivot to commentary made by a CNN legal analyst. They would then go back and forth a bit more until Blitzer finally was able to play the clip of her husband saying Trump was “using the power of the presidency” to advance his own personal political interests.
Conway, meanwhile, launched into one of her signature rants in which she rapidly threw everything against the wall before taking pointed shots at CNN and Blitzer himself.
“What you just quoted is said every day by other voices, but you wanted to put it in my husband’s voice because you think somehow that that will help your ratings or that you’re really sticking it to Kellyanne Conway,” she fumed. “And let me be very clear. You didn’t stick it to Kellyanne Conway. I think you embarrassed yourself and I’m embarrassed for you because this is CNN now?”
“I looked up to you when I was in college and law school, I would turn on CNN to see what Wolf Blitzer had to say about war, famine, disruption abroad,” Conway continued. “I really respected you for all those years as someone that would give you the news and now it’s what somebody’s husband.”
Blitzer would go on and bring up another famous political couple with polar-opposite views, political strategists Mary Matalin and James Carville, pointing out that he’d had multiple sensitive on-air discussions with them about their differences. Conway, for her part, largely brushed off the comparison and plowed forward.
At the end of the interview, after Conway said she was a “very generous, kind person” while complaining that CNN has become just a bunch of “gossip girls,” Blitzer let her know that she’s “always welcome to come back and join me here.”
“You’ll stay in my prayers,” Conway replied.
