Kellyanne Conway has an on-air credibility crisis.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, co-anchor Mika Brzezinski declared that she “will not interview her.”
“It’s giving people dishonesty, it’s not worth the interview,” she said, as co-host Joe Scarborough added, “She goes out and lies and you find out about those lies a couple hours later.”
An anchor from a different network said Conway hasn’t been invited on their show for months, saying the viewer gets “nothing out of her” because “she constantly obfuscates and misrepresents the truth.”
“At best, Conway is low-hanging spinning fruit, sugary but empty. At worst she’s an apparatchik or, as Carl Bernstein puts it, ‘a propaganda minister.’ Neither is good for the republic,” the anchor added. “That’s why I’ve chosen not to have her on.”
Some in television have wondered if Conway is in the room when decisions are being made. Scarborough said on Tuesday that Conway “is a free agent” who books her own television appearances.
“She goes out, she says whatever she wants to say … and then she comes back in and they have to clean it up. Now she will lie, as she does every time the truth comes out she will say she’s being victimized,” Scarborough said.
Conway, the former Trump campaign manager who is regularly lampooned on “Saturday Night Live,” has long been a figure of fascination, in part for her deadpan defense of outlandish statements by the candidate and now president.
But Conway’s also been considered a master dissembler and manipulator of the media, a reputation that hit a new high on Monday, when she told MSNBC that now-former national security adviser Michael Flynn had the “full confidence” of President Donald Trump. About an hour later, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the White House was “evaluating” the situation around Flynn. By that evening, Flynn was gone.
Monday’s incident was just the latest TV-generated controversy that Conway has found herself in, making statements that later turned out to be false or misleading. And anchors have taken notice.
Two weekends ago, CNN declined to have Conway on their Sunday show “State of the Union” because the White House had offered the rest of the Sunday shows Vice President Mike Pence, and, as the network said in an official statement, it had “serious questions about her credibility.”
But like other networks that have questioned Conway’s truthfulness, CNN had trouble staying away from her. Conway was back on the air a few days later for an explosive 25-minute interview with Jake Tapper that lit up the Internet.
Conway and a White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
To be sure, Conway is still in a senior role at the White House, so it’s unlikely she’ll be gone from the airwaves anytime soon. And according to Conway herself, the President personally asks her to go on television on his behalf.
“Kellyanne is still a senior adviser to President, [it] would be silly not to book her if there is a relevant news story,” said a source at NBC’s “Today” show.
And there is an added benefit of having Conway on: Her interviews tend to lead to viral moments when anchors can get praised for being “journalistic heroes” for pushing back against her dubious assertions.
Last week it was Tapper grilling Conway, admonishing the White House for its disregard for the facts and getting her to admit CNN was not “fake news.” On Tuesday, it was Matt Lauer questioning Conway over how Flynn’s situation became “unsustainable” over time, as Conway insisted, when in fact the White House knew Flynn had misled them last month.
“Kellyanne, that makes no sense!” Lauer said incredulously. “Last month the Justice Department warned the White House that General Flynn misled them! And that as a result he was vulnerable to blackmail and at that moment he still had the complete trust of the president?”
Conway murmured, “That’s not true,” and added, “Matt, I’m telling you what the president has said, which is that he’s accepted General Flynn’s resignation and that he wishes him well and we’re moving on.”
NBC’s “Today” show Twitter account quickly tweeted out the moment with the quote “That makes no sense,” garnering thousands of retweets.
Alex Weprin contributed to this report.
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