Kellyanne Conway Keeps Getting Caught In Her Own Lies

Blatant lies, falsehoods, misstatements, and whatever else you want to call the barrage of “alternative facts” (though please don’t call them that) were a major staple of Donald Trump’s campaign, and unsurprisingly, that hasn’t changed in the weeks of his presidency. It doesn’t matter how much video footage we have, if the press or the people are bringing up something Trump doesn’t like, he and Sean Spicer will continue to say it never happened until we all get dizzy from chasing reality in those circles and eventually pass out. It’s a nonsensical and entirely immature tactic, as well as an infuriatingly effective one.

Along with Trump and Spicer, Kellyanne Conway is dedicated to the “fake it till you make it people stop asking questions” method. Heck, she’s the one that coined the ludicrous term “alternative facts.” But just as we’re seeing with Sean Spicer and the press’ refusal to take him seriously as a competent liaison to the government, the title of “counselor” is no longer enough to earn Conway the respect that job usually warrants.

Instead, more and more media outlets are calling her out for her lies (rather than folding under the exhausting weight of having to defend reality), and any remaining dregs of credibility are disappearing before our eyes.

First up, Conway tried to refute the idea that that CNN didn’t want her on their show State of the Union.

Here’s how she responded:

To which CNN pulled out the receipts.

And MSNBC  quickly followed suit.

It sure would look bad if that bastion of “fake news” (as this administration keeps insisting) doesn’t respect Trump’s surrogates enough to even ask them questions, so it makes sense for her to attempt the political equivalent of “no, I broke up with them.” Does anyone actually believe Conway’s version of these events? If so, what could that trust in her words possibly be based in? Certainly not any precedent of honesty. Conway consistently demonstrates an utter disregard for facts, as well as a refusal to accept any responsibility when called out for that lack of facts.

The most recent case in point: When Conway referenced the nonexistent “Bowling Green Massacre” last week, the internet had a field day with her made-up tragedy. Conway responded by basically saying “Hey, we all make mistakes.” Which, yes, we do. It would be nice if she had any sense of personal accountability, because due to the nature of her job, her words (and therefore even “honest mistakes”) carry a lot more weight than most of ours, but yes, sure, a slip of the tongue is human.

But this wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t a slip-up. It was a repeated attempt to manipulate her audience–the American people–with inaccurate exaggerations and fear. And we know this because Cosmo is now saying Conway used the same phrase in an earlier interview with them as well.

“He did, it’s a fact,” she said of Obama. “Why did he do that? He did that for exactly the same reasons. He did that because two Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined ISIS, traveled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills, and come back here, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre of taking innocent soldiers’ lives away.”

And then The Daily Beast pointed out that Conway said almost the exact same thing in an interview with TMZ that same day.

“President Obama suspended the Iraq refugee program for six months in 2011 and no one certainly covered—I think nobody noticed. He did that because, I assume, there were two Iraqis who came here, got radicalized, joined ISIS, and then were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers.”

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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