In cable news interview, Conway defends actions of the 45th president (as well as the 6th, 17th, and 40th) in their presidential scandals.
Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Trump, yesterday defended nearly two centuries of presidential scandals during an interview with Sean Hannity.
Conway appeared on Fox News’ Hannity to bolster President Trump’s most recent attacks on the Democrat-led impeachment effort. Throughout the meandering twenty-minute interview, however, Conway also took time to defend scandals that have plagued past administrations in what Hannity later described as “a long overdue attempt to set the record straight, a record controlled by Deep State docents at the National Archives.”
The discussion began after Hannity asked Conway if Democratic criticism of this president was the worst harassment she had seen in her career. Her response: “My career? It’s the worst presidential harassment in American history! But this is nothing new. Andrew Johnson was unfairly impeached—impeached, Sean—for firing his Secretary of War. Sure, Congress had just passed a law saying it was illegal for him to do that, then he went and did it anyway. But that was a phony law. Any real American would see that it was a perfect firing. Perfect!”
Conway was referring to the country’s first presidential impeachment, that of President Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson.
When pressed about how far back this level of harassment has existed, Conway pointed to the election of John Quincy Adams, the 6th president of the United States.
“In that election, the House had to step in to decide the president. It was unusual, but Adams won fair and square. Still, the Democrats accused him of a quid pro quo. They said Adams gave the Secretary of State job to [Speaker of the House] Henry Clay in exchange for Clay’s help swaying votes. I mean, yeah, that may have happened, but so what? The American people want their president to be a dealmaker. The best presidents have all been dealmakers!”
Conway did acknowledge that other scandals resulted from poor judgement on the part of the president’s staff, including the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan Administration. She opined, however, that “in the end, we were doing the right thing. To not have supported the Contras’ pro-democracy cocaine trafficking would have been an affront to freedom everywhere.”
Hannity concluded the segment by asking Conway about President Nixon’s conduct, to which she responded bluntly, “The Democrats should’ve thanked Nixon. He was a true whistleblower for exposing obvious security failures at the Watergate Office.”
