(Photo of Kellyanne Conway, George Conway, and their twins, via Kellyanne Conway’s Twitter feed.)
Last night, senior White House advisor Kellyanne Conway announced that she would be leaving her position at the end of the month to spend more time with her family.
“Our four children are teens and ‘tweens starting a new academic year, in middle school and high school, remotely from home for at least a few months. As millions of parents nationwide know, kids ‘doing school from home’ requires a level of attention and vigilance that is as unusual as these times,” wrote the person who spent months inveighing against school closures and pretending that the Trump administration was making great progress against COVID.
With decades of experience selling candidates, Conway is carefully packaging herself in a herself as a relatable mom — “less drama, more mama” — and a Republican stalwart, praising Trump for having “a measurable, positive impact on the peace and prosperity of the nation, and on millions of Americans who feel forgotten no more.”
After five years of “alternative facts” in service of his campaign and presidency, Conway is bailing out right before the Trump train slams smack into that brick wall on November 3. (In theory, anyway.)
Conway’s husband George, a litigation Of Counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, spent the day tweeting his usual barrage of attacks on his wife’s employer before abruptly announcing last night that he was withdrawing from the group and going on Twitter hiatus.
“Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission. Passionately,” he posted, before going silent.
The catalyst for the Conways’ abrupt exit appears to have been their daughter’s increasingly erratic public behavior, including tweeting last week that she intends to seek legal emancipation after “years of childhood trauma and abuse.” Which we’re not linking to because she’s a child, and we are all adults who know how to work Google.
But whatever the reason, George and Kellyanne Conway are getting out of Dodge just in time to disassociate themselves from the coming conflagration. She’ll still be a viable Republican consultant, and he’ll still be able to show his face at Federalist Society dinners. Pretty convenient timing, huh?
And speaking of convenient timing, we note that the as-yet unknown author of the White House tell-all A Warning by “Anonymous” (affiliate link) deferred his or her compensation until 2021, meaning that it didn’t appear on mandatory financial disclosures for 2020. The publishers of the book made the author available for a Reddit AMA, during which he or she promised that “Trump will hear from me, in my own name, before the 2020 election.”
Looks like Kellyanne Conway is scheduled to speak on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention. Will we get the usual nasty attacks or … something else?
STAY TUNED.
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.