Kellyanne Conway says she won't take her husband's advice to resign
WASHINGTON - White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Thursday that her husband, who has been publicly trading insults with President Donald Trump, would like for her to resign but that she has no intention of doing so.
"What message would that send to the feminists everywhere who pretend they're independent thinkers and men don't make decisions for them?" Conway said during a morning television appearance. "They can talk it, and I can walk it. I can live it."
Conways's comments on Fox Business Network came a day after Trump called conservative lawyer George Conway a "wack job" and a "husband from hell" who is hurting his family.
George Conway, a persistent critic of the president, has spent the last several days on social media suggesting Trump's mental condition is deteriorating - and he continued to do so in series of tweets on Thursday morning.
Kellyanne Conway told Fox host Maria Bartiromo that Trump continues to be supportive of her.
"He's protective of me, and that's what people should really take from this," Conway said. I'm not being asked to choose between my marriage and my job. . . . The president has never made me feel that way."
Conway that she can "appreciate" Trump's efforts to defend himself against her husband and that she has been surprised that her husband has chosen to air his concerns about Trump so publicly.
"I was raised . . . in a household of strong Italian Catholic women who taught me that you air grievances like that in private, so it is very surprising to see it be so public," Conway said.
She said that she and her husband have "certainly have had those conversations" about his tweeting and suggested that the media is giving him too much attention. "I don't know when the feminists are going to write the story about the unusual situation of a man getting power through his wife, but that's what we have here," she said.
Conway acknowledged that it's an unusual situation for a president to be engaged in a public dispute with the spouse of one of his top aides.
"It's not just unusual, it's unusual for George, who people know as a very private person, who really hasn't weighed in on many matters over the years," Conway said.
She said that since her family moved to Washington 2½ years ago, she has been supportive as George Conway as he seeks new job opportunities - including some in the Trump administration - and that she continues to be. She suggested he would make a good judge or law school professor.
"He's a brilliant litigator," Kellyanne Conway said. "He's not a psychiatrist, but he's a brilliant litigator."
Earlier Thursday, before his wife's TV appearance, George Conway posted a video on Twitter of Trump being interviewed in 1980 on NBC by Tom Brokaw.
"There's a clip of Trump online talking to Tom Brokaw thirty years ago and Trump is speaking in complete, coherent sentences," George Conway wrote. "It's quite a remarkable contrast to today, when all you get are these often incompréhensible word salads."