“It makes it very, very, very difficult” for her to do her job, said one former senior White House official of the war of words between George Conway, husband of Kellyanne Conway (right), and President Donald Trump. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images white house Aides struggle to see strategy in Trump’s Conway, McCain fights The president has repeatedly forced people around him to make painful choices between their loyalties.

He is a “whack job,” a “husband from hell,” and a “stone cold LOSER.” Those were just some of the insults President Donald Trump hurled on Wednesday at a once little-known corporate litigator who happens to be married to one of his top White House aides, Kellyanne Conway.

With a single insult-filled morning tweet, tapped out from the White House residence before 8 a.m., the president extended his dispute with Conway’s anti-Trump spouse, George, into a bewildering second day. By the afternoon, Trump had complemented it with new attacks on a dead man: the late Republican senator and war hero John McCain. Speaking in Ohio, Trump declared that he “never liked [McCain] much … [and] probably never will.”


As the lurid disputes dominated cable news for several more hours, it was unclear whether Trump had any strategy in mind. Some people close to Trump speculated that he might be consciously trying to remake the news environment — creating a bizarre spectacle to displace criticism of his tepid response to the massacre of dozens of Muslims in New Zealand, the timing of the administration’s decision to ground Boeing’s 737 Max jets, and frenzied anticipation around the expected release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.

But the saga has left even White House aides accustomed to a president who bucks convention feeling uncomfortable. While the controversies may have pushed aside some bad news, they also trampled on Trump’s Wednesday visit to an army tank manufacturing plant in swing state Ohio.

“For the most part, most people internally don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said one former senior White House official. A current senior White House official said White House aides are making an effort “not to discuss it in polite company.” Another current White House official bemoaned the tawdry distraction. “It does not appear to be a great use of our time to talk about George Conway or dead John McCain. ... Why are we doing this?”

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While multiple sources said Kellyanne Conway’s standing with Trump appears to remain solid, some worried that the ongoing controversy could compromise her effectiveness if she is confronted in every one of her frequent television interviews with her husband’s scathing commentary about the president.

“It makes it very, very, very difficult” for her to do her job, said the former senior White House official.

The Conway and McCain feuds nonetheless revealed a handful of truths about the president and his White House, starting with the president’s hair-trigger sensitivity over accusations of mental instability. After the author Michael Wolff raised questions about Trump’s mental health in a 2018 book, the president lashed out — despite warnings that he was only inflating Wolff’s book sales — and insisted that he was a “stable genius.” Those who know him say these barbs are a point of particular sensitivity, and his dispute with Conway appears to have originated from the attorney’s recent suggestions that Trump is mentally ill.

After tweeting images from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the text medical professionals use to diagnose mental illness — listing the characteristic of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Conway charged that Trump is “unfit and incompetent for the esteemed office you temporarily hold.”

“I don’t think that Trump is laughing at that,” said Jack O’Donnell, a former Trump casino executive who has become a critic of the president. “He takes that stuff pretty personally.”

The two disputes also highlight Trump’s inclination to personalize disagreements and disputes, roping in family members and friends and working to divide them against one another to inflict maximum damage.

The Conway-Trump grudge match grew even more heated midday Wednesday when Trump stopped to take questions from reporters before boarding Air Force One en route to Ohio and described George Conway as “a tremendous disservice to a wife and family.”

The accusation mirrored the president’s response through the winter to the cooperation of his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, with federal prosecutors. The president took aim at Cohen’s father-in-law, retweeting a conservative author who had suggested he was a “loan shark” and telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in mid-January that rather than provide investigators with information on him, Cohen should “give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at.”

“He makes it personal so that it hurts a little bit more. That’s when he enjoys it,” O’Donnell said. “He’s very calculating in that way.”

Kellyanne Conway was drawn into the dispute on Wednesday, seemingly forced to choose between her husband and her boss. She chose the latter, perhaps one reason White House aides say her standing with Trump has not been diminished by her husband’s bitter exchanges with the president.

“You think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a nonmedical professional, accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?” Conway told POLITICO.

The running controversy over Trump’s attacks on McCain have also confronted his political allies with painful choices. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been pressed in recent days to respond to the president’s repeated denigration of McCain, whom Graham has described as being like a father to him. Graham, who has carefully cultivated a close relationship with Trump, praised McCain on Twitter — without mentioning the president by name.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas endorsed — and then embraced — Trump during the 2016 campaign even after the president unfavorably compared the appearance of Cruz’s wife, Heidi, to that of his own wife Melania. Trump also suggested Cruz’s father was linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

After insisting that he was “not in the habit of supporting candidates who attack my wife and who attack my father,” as Cruz put it at the 2016 GOP convention, he soon changed his tune.

“After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee,” he said a few months later.

Conway, for her part, delivered remarks at the White House’s South Court auditorium on Wednesday afternoon in honor of International Women’s History Month.

“It just goes to show that her stature is in the place that it’s always been. She’s somebody who’s highly respected throughout the building and everybody just stands by her,” said a senior White House official. “Her role is seen as invaluable.”