Kellyanne Conway’s attorney husband George Conway, daily Trump nemesis and critic, made an appearance Wednesday morning on MSNBC ahead of the first public impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives.
Conway was asked why he decided to do this appearance. He said what motivated him was the “moment” and the inability of millions of Americans to see President Donald Trump’s conduct regarding Ukraine as impeachable.
“I don’t even frankly watch much television news,” the conservative lawyer said, saying he mostly gets his news online and his sports from TV. “I don’t, frankly, want to be on television.”
“But this, I just don’t get why people can’t see this and why people are refusing to see this,” Conway continued, referring to impeachable conduct.
At the top of the interview, Conway was asked for an explanation of why, in his view, the president’s conduct is impeachable.
“Well, that goes to the very heart of what a high crime and misdemeanor is. I mean, there are two ways to look at it. The first, the way I prefer to look at it, is the holistic view, and the holistic view is that when you become president, you raise your right hand and you swear to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and also the Constitution provides and uses that word, those words ‘faithfully execute,’ in reference to faithfully execute the laws,” he said. “And when you take on that duty — and the Framers really took oaths seriously — you are promising to take that awesome power that’s being thrust upon you and use it for the nation’s benefit and not for your own benefit.”
“And the problem with Donald Trump is, he always sees himself first,” he continued. “Trump is all about Trump. And that’s why it was inevitable he’d get himself into this soup once again, and that’s what this is all about.”
“He’s using — he was using the power of the presidency, in its most unchecked area, foreign affairs, to advance his own personal interests as opposed to the country’s,” he added.
Conway said this is not about party loyalty, but putting the country, law and truth above partisanship. He said he is “horrified and appalled” that Republicans don’t see the situation that way.
“If you had told me three years ago that it would come to this, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said.
Supreme Court lawyer and former Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal teased the Conway appearance.
The two have co-bylined multiple op-eds in the Washington Post arguing that President Trump’s actions, in some cases, were unconstitutional; they have also argued that the president has committed impeachable acts.
Conway’s cable-news appearance was not simply a rarity.
[Image via Image via MSNBC screengrab]