Kelian Conway played a key role in Donald Trump’s inner circle as a senior adviser to the president before leaving the White House after the family drama. In 2018, her husband, attorney George Conway, began tweeting harsh criticism of Trump – calling him “cancer” and his administration “as shown in a garbage can fire” – and co-founder of the now defunct Super PAC, Lincoln Project. to stop the re-election of the president. (For his part, Trump called Conway “the husband of hell.”) Meanwhile, the couple’s teenage daughter Claudia, one of their four children, began speaking out against Trump and clashing with her parents at TikTok in 2020, at one point he said he “insisted on emancipation.” Today, Kelian and George – who are still married but not living together – are moving “back and forth” between their homes and their children, Conway told The Post. This week, she published a memoir, Threshold Editions, which describes all this and more, writing about her husband: “I was considering the possibility that the man who always held my back might one day stab me.” Here she talks to Salena Zito of The Post about, among other things, “the loss of my husband on Twitter.”
Kelian was so blinded when her husband George started tweeting about Trump that she thought he was fake. Courtesy of Kelian Conway
New York Post: You have a chapter in a book called “George Doesn’t Tweet” about the first time your husband George attacked your boss, the President of the United States, and how this moment really took you by surprise.
Conway: What was shocking about this tweet, looking back, came shortly after [George] took his name from the Justice Dispute, Civil Division with a statement that read: “I called the president to get his name out. I sent him full support, the work in the administration is great and of course my wonderful wife. ” And five days later he tweeted it. So it was all very confusing. That’s why I said, “Well, he doesn’t tweet. And he wouldn’t say that. “He was inconsistent with his own actions.
What’s very annoying… I think it was like the summer of 2018, he said on Michael Isaac’s podcast “Skullduggery”: “Oh, I knew this administration was like a show and a container fire until April of that year. And I said to myself, “Really? Because then he came on Easter, then he came on Halloween, then he came to a very intimate dinner with Kushner. ”
Although they do not live together, Conway says she is still married to George, seen here in a wedding photo. Courtesy of Kellyanne Conway
The Post: There are some pretty harsh moments in the book when you confront George about his behavior by telling him that he’s the only person you’ve sworn to.
Conway: I have not sworn allegiance to Donald Trump and I do not expect George to swear allegiance to Donald Trump; but to “love, honor, and appreciate” means just that. And it was here that I had the feeling that he was violating our marriage vows. I had a job that he supported.
[The betrayal was him] to be so public about it: “I can cash you in for attention.” I like to say that I lost my husband on Twitter, and she’s not even hot, she’s not a person. George and I always took our marriage vows very seriously. We are faithful in our marriage.
I think this is a problem of the 21st century, because the competition for my husband’s love and attention was not another woman, it was a whole platform.
Conway says that although she and her husband are divided over politics, they are united in raising their families. Courtesy of Kellyanne Conway
The Post: Are you still together?
Conway: We are married.
The publication: How are the children?
Conway: The kids are great. My father and I are just going back and forth [between houses] … So someone is always there with them. We do this so that they can be in the schools where they want to be. [The oldest children] they wanted to end their academic careers where they began. And I can’t be the kind of mother who says to her children, “Be your own person, chart your own path,” and then tells them where to live and what to do. I tell their father, “It’s not like taking children to chemotherapy, we don’t have to complain. We can do that. ”
I think that my children have more discretion and judgment, resilience and self-control than adults [in the media] who tried to treat my children as if they were adults.
Conway said she experienced “pure horror” after learning that her daughter Claudia was on trend on Twitter.Instagram @claudiamconway
The Post: Are you talking about the journalist Taylor Lorenz, then in the New York Times, who interviewed your then 15-year-old daughter Claudia, without the permission of either of her parents?
Conway: Yes.
Nothing in this was right. There is this unspoken social construction and [the Times] they kicked him for kicks and clicks. And I think it was all a manifestation, a very extreme and cruel manifestation of what became very clear from the moments when Donald Trump won: that the work of the media to get the story will quickly turn into getting the president.
The publication: There is a moment in the book where you describe the horror you experienced when you realized that Claudia was on trend on Twitter.
Conway: People wanted me to be angry with Claudia: “Take her phone, punish her.” My first and lasting feeling about all this was pure horror. I was afraid that this horrible Taylor Lorenz and other irresponsible people in the mainstream media had targeted my family.
She [was] 15. Here’s someone who can’t drive, can’t vote, can’t pierce his ears, or watch an R-rated movie without parental permission. Anyway, [Lorenz thought] it is appropriate to contact her directly and wave to her about what every teenager wants.
George and Kelly Conway share four children. Courtesy of Kelian Conway
The Post: Write about how you persevered in the boys’ club – Steve Bannon, Ryan Pribus and Jared Kushner. They seem to bother you a lot.
Conway: They did it. And all my life I was used to dealing with jealous little boys. I was raised by these strong Italian Catholic women… But I was also used to working in the Republican polls, which is a male-dominated industry.
My message to working women is … don’t do a lot of work when men exclude you. Just outsmart them, outsmart and outdo them and everyone will notice. After all, life is meritocracy.
[Men] he would exclude me from certain meetings, situations or conversations, and then, voila, the president would simply accept that I was there and ask me for my opinion.
It was like, “Thank you for excluding me from this meeting with 20 people, which still ended because the president called and asked me just before he made the decision.
For [Bannon, Priebus and Kushner], that was safety in numbers. They behaved like a political group most of the time. They were dependent on each other.
And then different factions will be formed. So first it was Bannon and Jared, and then Bannon got angry one day and called [Kushner’s wife] “Princess Ivanka.”
President Trump was expecting, and America needed a cohesive, competent team… But I have a feeling that some people have made it much harder, and let’s just say, some people were happy to have power, but not responsibility.
Conway says Steve Bannon and others formed a boys’ club that excluded her. Bloomberg via Getty Images
The post: The book never talks about the president.
Conway: I just did it… I didn’t want to talk to the president, I wanted to try to do it better.
It’s like George, I just always think you can make it better. Honestly, it comes from growing up without a father. My Aunt Marie, may God rest her, told me, “You will wait for your father to come and pick you up. He was standing on the radiator, and every time a truck passed by, he would say, “Dad’s here. Dad is here, and he never came.
After all, I had a love affair with my father for 40 years before he died a few years ago. I met him when I was 12 and we were great.
But since I was younger, I wanted to be a bit of a problem-solving peacemaker. Do not distract the President of the United States with pettiness.
I am one of the few people who left [the White House] on her own terms … and remains part of the president’s inner circle. I’m probably one of a handful of people in this country who talk regularly to Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Chris Christie. These relationships are intact because they are based on mutual respect. And in my case, [I gave] great respect for those who were in real positions of power.
Conway said he still spoke regularly with Trump and several others in his administration. AFP via Getty Images
The Post: After the president lost in 2020, you talked about how he should have listed more of his achievements while in the campaign.
Conway: I feel that the election is for the future, not the past. But people say, “Things were better and I want it back.” It’s best to talk about what [things] they were like when he was in charge. The babies had formula to eat. You can go to the gas station for $ 50 instead of $ 120. The shipping containers were not in the ocean. Putin was not in Ukraine. NATO was paying its debts. Israel was better protected. Trade deals, production base, coal mining, energy, energy independence, all that, all that was better. This is one way to talk about the past.
The Post: As the first woman to ever run a successful presidential campaign, would you like to do it again?
Conway: My future in politics rests …
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