White House counselor Kellyanne Conway cemented her media legacy when she coined the term "alternative facts" to describe the Trump White House's lies. The crowd at a Newseum forum did not let her forget it.
It has been a long time since we have heard from Kellyanne Conway, but she re-emerged for a forum entitled "The President and the Press" at The Newseum.
It did not go well.
Conway sat for a half-hour interview with media columnist Michael Wolff to pitch her ideas on news coverage of Donald Trump, but the most challenging moment came from Conway herself.
Wolff asked Conway to react to the new Trump-era Washington Post masthead "Democracy Dies in Darkness," and Conway tried to deliver a critique of journalism, and TV journalism in particular, but wound up offering a rather amusing take:
You can turn on the TV — more than you can read in the paper, because I assume editors are still doing their jobs in most places — and people literally say things that just aren't true. They're not even disguised as opinion. (laughter) Yeah — they're not even disguised as opinion.
Conway's knowing smirk following the laughter says it all.
It was on TV, after all, where Conway made a new name for herself by defending the "alternative facts" that the White House churns out on a daily basis, and which are known to the rest of us as "lies."
That laughter, appropriate though it was, is a bitter reminder of an administration that is at war with the press — and with the truth.
