Kellyanne Conway

Clean-up needed in the Rose Garden. Will Kellyanne Conway report to Fox News, please?

After Donald Trump’s outrageous claim that he, unlike President Obama, calls the families of troops killed in action—a claim that came immediately after Trump admitted he hadn’t called or even sent letters to the families of four soldiers recently killed in Niger—Conway came out to do her usual task of trying to make it all sound reasonable and humane:

I think what the president was saying there is that there are many different ways to reach out to these families. Sometimes you call, sometimes you write, sometimes you actually meet them in person. And he doesn’t always make public when he’s doing that ...

Yes, what Trump was saying when he said that Obama didn’t make calls was that there are many different ways to reach out. That is exactly his implication, both on Monday and on Tuesday morning when he followed up by suggesting on a Fox News Radio show that “You could ask Gen. Kelly, did he get a call from Obama? I don't know what Obama's policy was.” Because definitely the way to settle this question for once and for all is for the media to make Trump’s chief of staff spend a lot of time talking about the son whose death he has reportedly worked to keep private.

What we have now is Trump on Monday saying Obama “didn’t make calls,” Trump on Tuesday saying both “I don’t know” and “ask one specific person about his own horrible experience,” and Conway on Tuesday saying that Trump meant something entirely different than the words he said. I’d ask why she would bother trying to clean up after Trump when he wasn’t done making messes, but after nine months we know the answer: they don’t care about the truth. They just care about saying something that feels like, in that one moment, it might sound good to Trump’s devoted base.