George Conway, husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, has an urgent warning about the president’s mental health
John Harwood | @johnjharwood
Published 7 Hours Ago Updated 5 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, was once seemingly on his way to a top role in the Trump administration.
Now he has become one of the president’s most outspoken critics, even as his wife holds a key role in the White House.
On Monday, George Conway tweeted warnings about the president’s mental health. Kellyanne Conway responded: “No, I don’t share those concerns.”
Kellyanne Conway, senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives on stage with U.S. President Donald Trump during the White House State Leadership Day conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Kellyanne Conway, senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives on stage with U.S. President Donald Trump during the White House State Leadership Day conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018.
At first, it looked like a package deal: Kellyanne Conway would join President Donald Trump’s White House staff, her husband, George, the new administration’s Justice Department.
The former happened, but the latter did not. And now, in a Washington spectacle unseen since the wife of Richard Nixon’s attorney general sounded alarms about Watergate, the spouse of a top presidential advisor is issuing urgent public warnings about Trump’s mental health.
As the Trump administration got underway, media reports placed George Conway in line to head the Justice Department’s civil division. But then Trump rocked the agency by firing FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, and within weeks George Conway withdrew as a candidate to remain a private lawyer.
Conway started publicly criticizing Trump days later. “Sad,” he tweeted, invoking the familiar Trump lament, that the president had complicated the legal defense of his travel ban with impolitic comments.
Soon afterward he sought to soften the impact. “I still ‘VERY, VERY STRONGLY’” support Trump, he assured Twitter followers, “and of course, my wonderful wife.”
By the spring of 2018, Conway’s tone had changed. After Trump called the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller unconstitutional, Conway wrote a Lawfare article rebutting that “meritless legal position.”
That summer, he ripped the president more sharply. As journalists scrutinized Trump’s dubious assertions, White House disarray and diplomacy with Russia, Conway publicly mused about the fate of a business executive behaving similarly.
“What if a CEO routinely made false and misleading statements about himself, the company, and results, and public attacked business partners, company ‘divisions’ (w/scare quotes!), employees, and analysts, and kowtowed to a dangerous competitor?” Conway tweeted.
Kellyanne Conway bristles at questions about her husband’s words as unrelated to her White House work. Trump accuses George Conway of seeking attention.
Washington cynics dismiss his stance for a different reason. While she retains Trump’s favor through unyielding public advocacy, they reason, he courts the president’s foes with an eye toward life after the administration.
But recent days make it more difficult to ignore the substance of what Conway says about the most powerful man in the world. Last week, Conway questioned Trump’s mental fitness while excoriating him for false claims about federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
“Have we ever seen this degree of brazen, pathological mendacity in American public life?” Conway tweeted. “Whether or not impeachment is in order, a serious inquiry needs to be made about this man’s condition of mind.”
Over the weekend, the embattled president launched a scattershot volley of attacks against General Motors, “Radical Left Democrats,” “the Fake News Media” and the late GOP Sen. John McCain. Trump retweeted mugshots, circulated by a well-known conspiracy theorist, of MS-13 gang members facing murder charges.
“His condition is getting worse,” Conway tweeted.
Monday he got more specific. Conway circulated medical criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
“Don’t assume that the things he says and does are part of a rational plan or strategy, because they seldom are,” Conway tweeted. “Consider them as a product of his pathologies, and they make perfect sense.”
Others have raised such concerns. In his unsuccessful 2016 GOP presidential campaign, Sen. Ted Cruz called Trump an “utterly amoral … pathological liar.”
Some mental health professionals that year publicly called Trump psychologically unwell. After Comey’s firing, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein mentioned the Constitution’s 25th Amendment outlining procedures for removing a president on grounds of incapacity, according to former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
Rosenstein later said publicly he doesn’t believe any basis exists for invoking the 25th Amendment and never advocated that. Conway on Monday raised the issue anew.
“All Americans should be thinking seriously now about Trump’s mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress – and the Vice President and Cabinet,” Conway tweeted.
If his wife thinks seriously about it, she doesn’t show it.
“No, I don’t share those concerns,” Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House on Monday.
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Paranoia ~ utilized?~ crazy as a fox?
TheHill
ADMINISTRATION
March 19, 2019 - 08:33 AM EDT
Trump blasts ‘fake news media’ as ‘absolute enemy’ in latest attack on press
President Trump on Tuesday said that “Fake News” is the “absolute Enemy” of the people and country as he renewed his attacks on the media.
Trump lashed out at the “Fake News Media” as “dishonest” and “corrupt,” lamenting that “there has never been a time like this in American History.”
“Very exciting but also, very sad!” he tweeted. “Fake News is the absolute Enemy of the People and our Country itself!”
It’s unclear what specifically triggered Tuesday morning’s barb toward the press, but Trump, who regularly derides coverage of his administration he considers unfavorable as “fake news,” has accused the news media of blaming him for last week’s deadly shootings at a pair of mosques in New Zealand.
Some U.S. media coverage has focused on the suspected gunman’s manifesto, which called Trump a “symbol of renewed white identity,” and some pundits have argued the president has stoked white nationalist fervor worldwide.
The president over the weekend lashed out at the media on multiple occasions.
He targeted “Saturday Night Live” after the sketch comedy show aired a rerun that included an opening that imagined the world if he never became president, suggesting the program should face consequences for its jokes at his expense.
In the same tweet on Sunday, he called it “hard to believe” he won the presidency with “such one sided media coverage.”
Later Sunday, Trump chastised a trio of Fox News anchors, suggesting they should work at competitor CNN instead. The message appeared to come after one of the individuals anchored a segment that highlighted economic concerns in parts of the Midwest.
The president routinely labels NBC, CNN and The Washington Post as “fake news” and has called The New York Times an “enemy of the people.” He has rarely targeted Fox News in his attacks.
Updated at 8:52 a.m.
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©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.
Deceptive tactics:-Stonewalling:
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler wrote to the White House last month demanding information about President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to fund the construction of a southern border wall.
Yet Nadler’s Feb. 22 deadline came and went with no response. Not only did the Democratic congressman not receive the documents he wanted, he didn’t even receive a customary letter back from the White House acknowledging his request.
And yet:
Poll: Half of Americans say Trump is victim of a ‘witch hunt’ as trust in Mueller erodes
SUSAN PAGE AND DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY | USA TODAY | 13 hours ago
According to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, Americans’ trust in Robert Mueller’s investigation is decreasing.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Amid signs that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference may be near its conclusion, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds that trust in Mueller has eroded and half of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s contention that he has been the victim of a “witch hunt.”
Support for the House of Representatives to seriously consider impeaching the president has dropped since last October by 10 percentage points, to 28 percent.
Despite that, the survey shows a nation that remains skeptical of Trump’s honesty and deeply divided by his leadership. A 52 percent majority say they have little or no trust in the president’s denials that his 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow in the election that put him in the Oval Office.
That number does reflect an improvement from previous polls. One year ago, 57 percent had little or no trust in his denials; in December, 59 percent did.
Twenty-eight percent say they have a lot of trust in former FBI director Mueller’s investigation to be fair and accurate. That’s the lowest level to date and down 5 points since December.
In comparison, 30 percent express a lot of trust in Trump’s denials, the highest to date.
President Donald Trump has been relentless in attacking Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Mueller indicted 34 people, including Russian intelligence operatives and some of Trump’s closest aides and advisers. The indictments detailed the eagerness of the Trump campaign to benefit from a sophisticated Russian effort to influence the 2016 election but have not accused the president’s aides of participating in that operation. Last week, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in federal prison for financial crimes.
The poll’s findings set the stage for a ferocious partisan battle when Mueller submits his report to Attorney General William Barr. The president’s cascade of criticism of those pursuing him has fortified his support and raised questions about his investigators.
More: Did Trump keep promises to insulate himself from his business? Only he knows
Trump tweets about Mueller
That campaign continued this weekend.
“What the Democrats have done in trying to steal a Presidential Election, first at the ‘ballot box’ and then, after that failed, with the ‘Insurance Policy,’ is the biggest Scandal in the history of our Country!” Trump declared in a tweet Sunday night.
Friday, Trump tweeted that “there should be no” report from Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 to investigate how Moscow tried to influence the presidential election and whether Team Trump cooperated.
“This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime,” Trump wrote Sunday, adding in a follow-up tweet, “THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!”
Fifty percent say they agree with Trump’s assertion that the special counsel’s investigation is a “witch hunt” and that he has been subjected to more investigations than previous presidents because of politics; 47 percent disagree. Just 3 percent don’t have an opinion.
There is, unsurprisingly, a stark partisan divide on that question: 86 percent of Republicans but just 14 percent of Democrats say Trump is the victim of a “witch hunt.” Among independents, 54 percent say he is; 42 percent say he isn’t.
The president’s success in persuading half of the electorate that he’s been subjected to unprecedented scrutiny is notable, says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center.
"Even among people who said they had ‘some’ trust in the Mueller investigation, half agreed with President Trump’s witch hunt allegation,” he says.
More: What happens when special counsel Robert Mueller delivers his report?
“Trump, he gets badgered every single day,” says Robert Lynch, 62, of Selden, New York, a Republican who describes himself as a “100 percent” supporter of the president. Mueller’s report is “going to say no collusion, absolutely none,” he predicts.
Annette Lantos Tillemann-Dick, 66, an innkeeper from Denver and a Democrat, disagrees, saying evidence of collusion by Trump’s campaign is obvious: “You don’t need a report to see it. It’s in our face.”
Lynch and Tillemann-Dick were among those surveyed. The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by landline and cellphone Wednesday through Sunday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
“I hope that illegal collusion makes it very difficult for the Republicans to continue to defend undefendable behavior on the part of the person who is sitting in the chief executive’s office,” Tillemann-Dick says. “And I hope that it would lead to him being removed from office.” (Tillemann-Dick, who was called randomly in the survey, happens to be the daughter of the late congressman Tom Lantos, D-Calif.)
A shift on impeachment
Support for impeaching Trump has cooled, the poll shows, in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration that she opposed the idea unless there was bipartisan support for it. Among Democrats, 41 percent say Pelosi’s comments had some or a lot of impact on their opinion about impeachment, about equal to the 42 percent who say they had no impact.
Pelosi’s argument that trying to remove Trump from office would divide the nation apparently flipped the public’s expectations of what Congress will do. Last fall, the poll found that a 54 percent-32 percent majority said a new Democratic majority in the House was likely to seriously consider impeachment.
Now, by 46 percent-41 percent, those surveyed predict that the House won’t.
“If he doesn’t get impeached, it’s not like it’s going to be the end of the world because 2020 is not super-far away,” says Calvin Crawford, 18, a political independent and a senior at University High School in Spokane, Washington, who was polled. “I think Trump is probably going to lose if a candidate comes out and starts to propose things that people actually want.”
Overall, Americans by 62 percent-28 percent say the House shouldn’t seriously consider impeaching Trump, compared with 54 percent-39 percent last October. While a 53 percent majority of Democrats support impeachment, just 6 percent of Republicans do.
Gloria Davy, 65, a Democrat from Tucson, says it would bring her “great joy” for Democrats to push for impeachment, but she worries about the upheaval that could follow.
“I can’t imagine what would happen to the stock market,” the Arizona retiree says. “So it’s probably best not to impeach him and to just have him run for his second term and lose. That would be the safest thing for our economy.”
She is eager to see Mueller’s report. “I’ll read it cover to cover,” she says.
Release the report?
As Mueller’s inquiry winds down, the debate over what to do about the confidential report he is required to submit to the Justice Department is heating up. Last Thursday, the House unanimously passed a resolution calling for public release of the report, but Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., blocked passage of the nonbinding measure in the Senate.
The poll found overwhelming and bipartisan support for releasing the report, whatever it finds. In all, 82 percent say it is important to them that the report be made public; 62 percent call that “very important.”
More: What happens after Mueller delivers his report? Congress braces for battles
Assessments of Mueller have become less positive and more partisan during his investigation. In June 2017, before he had brought any indictments or won any convictions, 30 percent viewed him favorably and 16 percent unfavorably, a net positive rating of 14 points. Twenty percent had never heard of him, and 33 percent weren’t sure what they thought.
In the new poll, 33 percent view him favorably and 31 percent unfavorably. That net positive rating of 2 points is his narrowest to date. As recently as last October, he had a net positive rating of 17 points, 42 percent-25 percent.
Few Americans expect the conclusion of the special counsel’s investigation is going to settle the controversies surrounding the president.
House committees controlled by Democrats launched a series of inquiries into Trump, his administration, his business practices and his family. Views of those investigations are narrowly divided: 49 percent say Democrats are doing the right thing by pursuing the investigations aggressively; 46 percent say they are going too far.
“Now we’re going after Ivanka, so there will be more and more and more,” said Davy, the Democrat from Arizona, “and he can’t veto it.”
Lynch, the avid Trump supporter from Long Island, says Mueller’s report will clear Trump and should recommend another investigation to follow into his 2016 opponent. "It should say, ‘OK, now we’re going after Hillary.’ "
© Copyright Gannett 2019
Perhaps this theatre of tests, the litmus between social processing of wjat goes between socialism and capitalism, so as that this U.S. political microcosm can mirror wjat.goes on an evolving new world order
How? Because, no one wants to communicate another hidden policy assumption floating around, that surmises the assumption of a nuclear war had not Trump been elected.
This logic, corresponds to the contradictory understanding of his constituency, who take this in faithfully.
Whereas this contradiction is mirrored in the potentially vastly larger scope of national-international conflict.
For this reason , the stalemate , even with perhaps the coming of the publication of the Mueller report.