The Only Truth Is Trump - By William Saletan
Kellyanne Conway’s response to the Flynn debacle is incredibly clarifying, in a terrifying way.
By William Saletan
Tuesday morning, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway went on TV to explain why National Security Adviser Mike Flynn had resigned overnight. Flynn’s undoing came in a sequence of four events. First, in a Dec. 29 phone call, Flynn secretly hinted to Russia’s ambassador that sanctions imposed by President Obama—to punish Russia for intervening in the presidential election—might be relaxed once Donald Trump took office. Later, Flynn told Vice President Mike Pence and others in the administration that in that phone call, he hadn’t discussed sanctions with the ambassador. Then, on Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates presented evidence of Flynn’s deception—based on U.S. intelligence transcripts of Flynn’s calls—to Trump’s White House counsel, Don McGahn. Finally, on Thursday, a day after firmly denying he had discussed sanctions with the ambassador, Flynn conceded that he “couldn’t be certain.”
That sequence raises questions about who knew what in the White House, when they knew it, and why Flynn stayed in his job for three weeks after Yates went to McGahn—only to be brought down once the Washington Post, on Monday night, revealed the Yates warning.
So how did Conway answer those questions? She minimized and excused the scandal. In doing so, she clarified the Trump administration’s four fundamental psychopathologies.
1. Loyalty within Trump’s circle is more important than loyalty to country. Conway emphasized that Trump had continued to support Flynn because “the president is very loyal.” This puzzled NBC’s Matt Lauer. He pointed out that Flynn had misled Pence and that Pence, in turn, had misled the country. Lauer reminded Conway that despite this, “You said late yesterday afternoon that the president had full confidence in Gen. Flynn. How could that be true?” Conway brushed aside this appeal to Trump’s duty to the public, focusing instead on Trump’s duty to Flynn. “The president’s very loyal,” she repeated.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/02/kellyanne_conway_s_clarifying_response_to_the_flynn_debacle.html?wpsrc=newsletter_tis&sid=5388f1c6dd52b8e4110003de