Conway slams media for 'obsession' with Trump's tweets

Criticism directed at President Donald Trump over his flurry of Twitter activity related to the London terrorist attack over the weekend is misguided, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Monday morning, the result of media that she suggested is eagerly critical of Trump, even amid more pressing situations.

The media, Conway said, has “this obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president.” Conway blamed that obsession for the uproar that began over the weekend when Trump hurled a political attack across the Atlantic, writing online that there had been “at least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’"


The quote selected by Trump was a misleading one. London Mayor Sadiq Khan had not downplayed the seriousness of the terrorist attacks but had sought to reassure residents that they should not be alarmed by an increased police presence. In response to the president’s tweet, a spokesman for the mayor said “he has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks.”

But Conway chafed Monday morning on NBC’s “Today” when asked if the president owes Khan an apology for misleadingly quoting him.

“I'm not going to allow, a day-and-a-half after terrorists did it again, whether they're ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed, they're savage murderers, it's an evil slaughter as the president said last night,” the counselor to the president said. “I'm going to not let him be seen as the perpetrator here. For every time you said Russia, imagine if you said ISIS. Every time you say Twitter, imagine if you said terrorist.”

Conway disputed the notion that Trump’s tweets represent his most relevant remarks on the subject of the weekend’s attacks in London. Instead, she pointed to the president’s repeated interactions with British Prime Minister Theresa May and his remarks at the Ford’s Theatre Annual Gala, where he declared that “this bloodshed must end. This bloodshed will end.”

“So we've got the 23rd ISIS-inspired or -directed attack taking innocent lives, children in Manchester, children in Nice and we want to know — we want to put some blameworthiness here on president Trump?” she continued. “I'm just not going to allow it.”

