White House counselor Kellyanne Conway unloaded on a Washington Examiner reporter who mentioned her husband’s sparring with President Donald Trump in an article, threatening to delve into the journalist’s personal life.
According to the Washington Examiner, Conway contacted reporter Caitlin Yilek Tuesday night without personally taking the conversation off the record. She appeared to take issue with a line in a recent article asserting that she had “been in the middle of Trump’s barbs with her husband, George, a conservative lawyer who frequently makes headlines for his criticism of the president.”
“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,” Conway said, formally citing her husband. “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.”
When Yilek offered to connect Conway to her editors, the White House aide immediately turned snide.
“You’re still not telling me what compels you to characterize my feelings in your story having never talked to me,” Conway said. “You can answer that question without your editors. You don’t have to rely upon the men in your life and pretend somehow by way of reporting that I rely on the men in my life, which clearly isn’t the case.”
Yilek pushed back, saying that drawing out the dynamic between George Conway and Trump wasn’t characterizing Kellyanne Conway’s feelings.
Conway was unswayed, and dropped a thinly veiled threat.
“Listen, if you’re going to cover my personal life, then we’re welcome to do the same around here,” she said. “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.”
Conway is far from the only one in the White House who gets aggressive when reporters stray from her exacting desires of how she wants to be depicted. Trump made good on his threat this week, prepping to order federal agencies to cancel their New York Times and Washington Post subscriptions in a fit of pique.
Read the full transcript of Conway’s call here.
