A senior aide to Donald Trump hit out at a journalist who posed questions about the US president’s demand that four Democrat congresswomen “go back” to where they came from – by questioning the reporter’s ethnic background.
Kellyanne Conway, an outspoken Trump supporter and his senior counsellor, attempted to defend her boss amid mounting criticism of a series of tweets sent on Sunday in which he described the non-white, left-wing lawmakers as “hating” America.
Trump suggested that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts should “go back” to their “broken and crime infested” countries. All of the women are US citizens and three of the four were born in the United States.
Yet as Conway insisted to media outside the White House on Tuesday that Trump was not racist, she pounced on a reporter who asked which countries the president had been referring to in his tweet.
“What’s your ethnicity?” Conway asked the reporter, Andrew Feinberg, in response.
“Why is that relevant?” Feinberg replied. “My own ethnicity is not relevant.”
“No, no, it is,” Conway insisted. “Because he said ’originally’.”
In truth, Trump never made that distinction.
Feinberg pressed Conway, who continued to deflect on behalf of her boss.
“He’s tired,” Conway said. “A lot of us are sick and tired of this country coming last to people who swore an oath of office.
“Tired of being criticised,” she continued, “being doxxed by a bunch of Hollywood d-listers who have nothing else to do but sit on their asses on Twitter all day.”
Feinberg himself later tweeted about the exchange.
Conway’s appearance in front of the media came as The Washington Post carried an op-ed by her husband in which he described Trump as racist.
Asked by Fox News if she agreed with her husband, Conway said: “I totally disagree.”