Kellyanne Conway thought it would be a good idea to speak on the air with CNN’s Jake Tapper this past weekend, and the interview only took a few moments to go completely off the rails. Conway refused to talk about the issues that Tapper wanted to discuss, and instead insisted on spouting the few statistics that she’s managed to memorize. Tapper didn’t hold back in calling her out, either. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript:
On Sunday, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway decided it was going to be a good idea to go on State of the Union on CNN with Jake Tapper. And I guess, based on her performance there, she actually had some things that she had rehearsed, things that she had practiced, things she wanted to say to Jake Tapper.
But Tapper wanted to focus on the news of the day, news of the week really, that Donald Trump knew about the payments that had been made to Michael Cohen that were then used to pay off Stormy Daniels. And I think Kellyanne Conway knew that those questions were coming but she did her best to try to avoid answering them and the result was the following train wreck.
Jake Tapper:
Nobody undermines the President’s message more than President Trump.Kellyanne C.:
Well, I’m here to amplify- Well, that’s not true.Jake Tapper:
President Trump puts out a tweet last week talking about how the unemployment rate is 3.9%, and he can’t even stay on message in a 10-word tweet. By the end of it, he’s talking “witch hunt.”Kellyanne C.:
Well, maybe it’s not- excuse me, maybe it’s not your message, but his message is the 3.9%. That’s the message American see-Jake Tapper:
So why does he undermine it with “witch hunt”?Kellyanne C.:
… those facts and figures- I think the judge T.S. Eliot in, excuse me, T.S. Ellis — great poet — T.S. Ellis in Virginia really said it best. He’s not a political figure. He has no skin in this game except the law. He really brushed back the Mueller folks by just saying, “Excuse me, have you burned through your $10 million budget yet? Where is this going, because if this is actually to impugn or assault or indeed impeach or something else the President, that’s not what this was supposed to be about.”A lot of Americans agree and you know that I hear from people who didn’t even vote for Donald Trump regularly, Jake, that they just want the guy to be able to have the space to do his job, and his job includes saying that the Iran nuclear deal was a bad deal from the beginning that gave up too many benefits-
Jake Tapper:
Does his job include lying to the American people?Kellyanne C.:
… too much cash for the-Jake Tapper:
Do you think that his job includes lying to the American people, because he continually does so and he undermines his own administration when he does so, period?Kellyanne C.:
Jake, he does, he does many things. You just want that- respectfully, you just want that to go viral, you want to say the word “President Trump” and “lie” in the same sentence. Look at all-Jake Tapper:
No, I want- I would like him to stop lying, quite frankly.Kellyanne C.:
Okay, here’s what doesn’t lie. Here are some facts and figures that you should start treating your viewing audience to. The 20,000 new Apple jobs, if Tim Cook could have brought those to this country, while his ally President-Jake Tapper:
I understand you don’t want to talk about the President’s credibility.Kellyanne C.:
Oh, no, no. I’ve already talked about it for five minutes. What I’m telling you is his credibility-Jake Tapper:
Do you think there’s a credibility crisis in this White House?Kellyanne C.:
No, I don’t because I know that you have the screaming graphics that says it, but you had screaming graphics that talked about Russian collusion, too. Those are gone and now we’re talking about this. This- excuse me, this-Jake Tapper:
I don’t know what’s gone in terms Russian collusion.Kellyanne C.:
The sheer volume and velocity alone of what this President accomplishes and what he puts on the table, in just one breakneck week he’s got a new Secretary of State who’s out there saying his job as the chief diplomat for this country is to make sure Iran is never-nuclear capable, and that’s why this President has serious questions about the JCPOA. That’s why, when he struck Syria a couple weeks ago, he said it was also- we said it was also a message to Iran and Russia, who are helping Assad. Does it bother you at all-Jake Tapper:
Which we covered.Kellyanne C.:
… that the American press corps says this president is not tough enough on Russian and the German press corps in the East Room, a week ago Friday, asked Chancellor Merkel if she’s concerned at how tough President Trump is being on Russia? People care that the regulations are lower. They care that Israel is in the crosshairs, our great ally is in the crosshairs-Jake Tapper:
And they also care and they want the American president to tell them the truth.Kellyanne C.:
We talked about that.Jake Tapper:
They want the American president to tell them the truth.Kellyanne C.:
They know the numbers don’t lie. They know 3.9%-Jake Tapper:
You keep talking about the unemployment rate, and it’s fantastic, and we herald it-Kellyanne C.:
Because it matters to people.Jake Tapper:
It matters to people, absolutely.Kellyanne C.:
It matters to people. There’re over 3 million new jobs-Jake Tapper:
It also matters to people that the president tell them the truth.Kellyanne C.:
He is telling the truth.
Now let me say this, as both somebody who’s been a producer, been a host, has been in countless TV studios watching guests, I can tell you exactly what happened there with Kellyanne Conway, because I’ve seen it before. She memorized a set of talking points. She did not wanna deviate from that set of talking points. So regardless of what Jake Tapper asked her, she kept trying to throw out “3.9% unemployment rate,” “unemployment rate among African Americans lower than ever, at least lower than the last 10, 15 years. I don’t know. But those are the things. Let’s talk about those things.”
Tapper didn’t want any of that, and I guarantee you when they booked her, they didn’t say they were going to talk about those things. Kellyanne Conway could not go off-script because she knew if she did, she wasn’t smart enough to carry on the conversation. And unfortunately, again, I’ve seen too many guests like that — good guests, great writers, horrible guests. But they were still more educated than Kellyanne Conway. She tried to divert, she tried to distract, and she got busted every single time.
But if she wants to talk about those things that she was trying to throw out to Jake Tapper, let’s talk about ’em for a second. Let’s talk about that 3.9% unemployment rate. You know, that unemployment rate that started dropping almost in Obama’s first month in office and continued to go down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, where it still is today. That Trump economic boom that we’re seeing? Those are the remnants of the Obama economic policies. Things are going to get much worse in the very near future.
I mean, hell, we’ve already seen job growth is slowing. Yeah, we added 139,000 new jobs. That’s fantastic! During the Obama years, we were adding 249,000 new jobs per month. Not as good, right?
Nonetheless, Kellyanne Conway needs to stop going on TV. She’s not doing this administration any favors. She’s going out there performing as a complete train wreck, not answering the questions, and only furthering the public’s belief that this administration is absolutely falling apart. Except of course with the die-hard Republicans. They’re gonna go out there, they’re gonna watch that clip and they’re gonna think that that’s Jake Tapper just being mean to Kellyanne Conway. Not letting her finish her thoughts.
But that’s not what happened. Kellyanne Conway was told what they were gonna talk about in that interview. I do not believe that Jake Tapper deviated off that topic. But Kellyanne Conway wanted to take him off of it because she knows that the actions of the Trump Administration at this point have become completely indefensible. So she would rather talk about the two or three statistics that she actually bothered to memorize.
