Kellyanne Conway was in the East Room of the White House on June 5, 2017 when Sean Spicer walked towards her.
“Did you know about this?” Spicer asked. He put out his phone. Twitter was open. On the screen was a tweet written by her husband George.
“It’s not possible,” Conway said, she recalls today in her memoir “Here the Deal” (Threshold Edition). “George doesn’t tweet.”
Within seconds, Conway realized that not only had George actually tweeted, he had taken a swipe at his boss, President Donald Trump, for tweets that would complicate matters for the solicitor general’s office, something that But was trying to defend his travel ban. Muslim country.
“These tweets may make some people feel better, but they certainly won’t help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what really matters. Sadly,” George wrote,
As Conway tried to call and message George, to no avail, questions swirled in his head: Why did George do this? Why didn’t he mention it earlier? “And,” she writes, “was this tweet actually posted by my Trump-loving, mega-hat-wearing husband, George Conway?”
“Ever since George and I first got serious, I’ve been looking at the possibility that the man who always had my back might one day stab me in it.”
Kellyanne Conway, in her new memoir “Here the Deal”
The couple, who married in 1998 and had four children: twins Claudia and George IV, Charlotte and Vanessa, had always had a strong relationship, he believed. Her husband George, a lawyer and conservative political activist, was generally quiet and reserved, she writes.
But “Ever since George and I first got serious, I’ve been looking at the possibility that the man who always had my back might one day stab me in it,” she writes.
Conway, who became the first woman in American politics to run a successful presidential campaign when Trump won in 2016 and was later appointed senior counsel to the president, has been a front row seat to marriage, motherhood and one of the most colorful writes about. Administration in American History.
After his first tweet in 2017 harming Trump, George’s following posts were mostly spontaneous. Then, in the spring of 2018, George and Conway were invited to dinner at the home of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, with whom they had a strained relationship.
“Ignoring or excluding me despite Jared’s regular practice,” Conway thought, adding that the dinner invitation “may only be a positive.”
During the meal she discussed “pressing legislative action, midterm, and far-right presidential elections” in 2020, while her husband George kept quiet and wrote when she was occasionally asked for opinion.
A week after dinner, George revealed on Twitter — and never stopped.
He called out Trump’s idea of considering pardons for two former aides.astonishing”, and agreed with a reporter’s observation that White House officials speaking for the president are in a difficult position because Trump often says one thing but does another.
“So true,” he wrote in the now-deleted post. “It’s absurd. That’s why people are knocking on their doors to be their director of commerce.
“Oh no, I thought, here we go again,” Conway writes of her reaction to her tweetstorm. Although she often asked George why he was creating a ruckus on Twitter, he did not respond.
Soon after, Ivanka Trump handed Conway a Post-It note with “the names of two local doctors who specialized in couples therapy.”
“I noticed that he avoided putting it in a text or email. I appreciated the information and his thoughtfulness and wanted to pursue it,” Conway writes. “When I showed George the names, he declined one and said ‘okay’ to the other while looking at his phone. We never went.”
Then, on July 3, 2019, they were at their beach house on the Jersey Shore when she turned to her husband and calmly told him what was on his mind.
“You are the only person in this world with whom I swore in front of God and our loved ones and five priests at an altar at the Basilica Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia,” she says. “You are the only person in this world to whom I have given birth to four children.”
George seemed dazed, but she continued to say that he was the only person who had a choice to make. “You can see me mostly as your wife of 18 years and the mother of your four children, or you can see me mostly as a senior adviser to President Donald Trump. When you wake up every morning, you have to decide. Have to do with how you look at me.”
“George,” she said, “how do you see me?”
She writes that Conway shouted without making eye contact, “You’ve ruined yourself and you’ve embarrassed this family.”
Conway shot back,”I Shame on this family? You left me for Twitter and she’s not hot either.”
