Trump ratchets up attacks after George Conway questions his mental fitness

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday ratcheted up the Twitter feud with George Conway, the husband of his top aide Kellyanne Conway, in a scathing attack in which he calls the prominent conservative lawyer “a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!”

The president’s latest tweet, in which he accuses Conway of being “VERY jealous” of his wife, comes after Conway fired off a series of tweets Monday morning questioning the president’s mental fitness after his weekend tweetstorm.

George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2019

Trump previously slammed Conway as a “total loser” in his first response to Conway, while retweeting his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who recycled a condescending nickname Trump has used, calling George Conway “Mr. Kellyanne Conway” and asserting that “he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success.”

A total loser! https://t.co/vm3Vv2f9jf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2019

George Conway issued a speedy response Tuesday on Twitter, sarcastically congratulating the president for effectively drawing more attention to his original tweets in which he ponders various mental disorders that Conway argues could be applied, zeroing in on “narcissistic personality disorder.”

Congratulations! You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job! https://t.co/Dk9bI3sBs7

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 19, 2019

After the president’s latest tweet on Wednesday, Conway was quick to issue another sarcastic response to the president, welcoming his continued engagement on the issue as proof of his point, saying “You seem determined to prove my point. Good for you!”

“You. Are. Nuts.” Conway added in a second tweet.

You. Are. Nuts. https://t.co/ZSpb3UXVPC

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 20, 2019

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, was asked Monday about her husband’s tweet and said she does not share his views.

“I don’t share those concerns and I have four kids, and I was getting out of house this morning and was talking with the president about substance so I may not be up to speed on all of them,” she said when asked whether she shares the concerns her husband has voiced.

In an unrelated exchange on Monday, in which Conway was addressing the New Zealand massacre, Conway urged people who are not experts to stop commenting as if they were.

“By the way, folks, if you’re not an expert on this, stop weighing in like you are,” she said in an interview on Fox and Friends. “We don’t need to hear your opinion on every single thing.”

The president has previously said “I really don’t know the guy.”

But Conway had been up for a top Justice Department job leading the civil division in the early months of the Trump administration, before ultimately withdrawing himself from consideration in June 2017, citing family concerns.

While Conway has recently ratcheted up his tweets in expressing his concerns about the president’s mental fitness, he has long used the social media platform to tweet critically about the president, even as his wife fills a top job in the White House and is one of the president’s most ardent public defenders.

Just last week, Conway took to Twitter to call the president a “liar” and “pathological,” raising the question of impeachment and calling for a “serious inquiry … about this man’s condition of mind,” and questioning: “Is it possible to count? At any level of government in this country, in any party, have we ever seen anything like this? It’s beyond politics. It’s nuts. It’s a disorder.”

In an interview with the Washington Post Tuesday, George Conway challenged the notion that the president hardly knows him and noted that he’s had a number of notable interactions with the president over the course of a decade, including on legal matters.

In the interview, he defended his penchant for tweeting about the president as a way to avoid letting his frustrations spill into his marriage.

“The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. That’s basically it. Frankly, it’s so I don’t end up screaming at her about it,” Conway told the Post.
 
George Conway declined to comment on the state of his marriage, other than to say that he wishes his wife didn’t work in the White House, though he said he is proud of her.

“No one was prouder than I was that she was able to elect this man president despite his obvious flaws,” he said of his wife, insisting that he is not jealous.

But he also took some credit for her present success.

“I made it possible for her to be where she is today. So there’s that. It’s not about jealousy. It’s about reality. Who this man is, and whether he’s fit for public office. Which, as I’ve said, he isn’t,” Conway said.

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