Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, used her time in the spotlight at the Republican National Convention to paint the president as a supposedly kindhearted champion of women.
“A woman in a leadership role still can seem novel,” Conway said. In 2016, she became the first woman to run a successful US presidential campaign.
Later, she claimed to have “seen firsthand many times the president comforting and encouraging a child who has lost a parent, a parent who has lost a child, a worker who lost his job, an adolescent who has lost her way to drugs.”
“There always will be people who have far more than us,” she continued. “Our responsibility is to focus on those who have far less than us.”
Contrary to Conway’s depiction of Republican leadership, the RNC featured a speaker the night before who has argued that only the “head” of a household should have voting power because “in a Godly household, the husband would get the final say.”
Conway delivered her speech three days after announcing she would resign from her position at the White House at the end of August, citing the need to spend more time with her family.
Her husband, George Conway, will take a step back from The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group he co-founded with fellow Republicans. He is also taking a hiatus from Twitter, where he frequently posts searing criticisms of the president, who once called him “Moonface” in retort.
The Conways’ marriage ― between a strident Trump supporter and an unrelenting Trump detractor ― has been regarded as a microcosm of the state of America’s right-wing, divided by Trumpism.
“We disagree about plenty, but we are united on what matters most: the kids,” Kellyanne Conway wrote in a statement released Sunday. “Our four children are teens and ‘tweens starting a new academic year, in middle school and high school, remotely from home for at least a few months. As millions of parents nationwide know, kids ‘doing school from home’ requires a level of attention and vigilance that is as unusual as these times.”
She concluded: “For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama.”
Conway did not mention her 15-year-old daughter by name, but Claudia Conway announced publicly over the weekend that she would seek emancipation from her parents, claiming unspecified abuses. For months, she has attracted attention by posting fierce criticisms of her mother and Trump to TikTok, and by publicly goading both her parents on Twitter. The teen said on Twitter that she was “devastated” to learn her mother would be speaking at the RNC, and she is now on a break from social media.
Conway appeared to include a nod to her children as she concluded her remarks Wednesday night.
“In honour of the women who empowered me and for the future of the children we all cherish, thank you and God bless you,” she said.