Kellyanne Conway struggling to cool controversies she set off The counselor to the president insists she hasn't lost Trump's confidence. 'His message is my message,' she tweets.

Facing rising heat over her recent controversy-inducing TV appearances, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday attracted the wrath of a government watchdog and high-profile news anchors.

Just one day after she declared on national TV that former national security adviser Michael Flynn enjoyed “the full confidence of the president,” the White House once again trotted out Conway Tuesday morning, this time to explain why Flynn had resigned.


Conway’s explanation, that Flynn’s misrepresentation to Vice President Mike Pence and others of his conversation with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. made his position untenable, did not hold up well under the scrutiny of repeated questioning. In two network news interviews, she could not answer why Flynn’s resignation came on Monday when the White House had been briefed weeks ago about his misstatements by then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

“Mike Flynn had decided it was best to resign. He knew he had become a lightning rod and he made that decision,” Conway told NBC “Today” show anchor Matt Lauer. “That fact is what became unsustainable, actually. I think misleading the vice president really was the key here. And I spoke with the president this morning. He asked me to speak on his behalf and to reiterate that Mike Flynn had resigned.”

That answer would later be contradicted by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who said at the daily press briefing that President Donald Trump had asked Flynn for his resignation.

And as she dealt with the fallout from Monday’s resignation, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee added to her troubles, posting a letter from the Office of Government Ethics in which its director called her overt boosting of Trump’s daughter’s fashion line on Fox News a “clear violation” of ethics rules.

“I recommend that the White House investigate Ms. Conway’s actions and consider taking disciplinary action against her,” OGE director Walter Shaub wrote, a response to Conway’s comments on Fox News last week that she herself characterized as a “free commercial” for Ivanka Trump’s label after the president criticized the department store Nordstrom for dropping it.

Her answers on Flynn Tuesday morning were puzzling to both Lauer and George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Lauer, the first of Conway's interviews to air, admonished the counselor to the president that an answer she gave regarding the Flynn timeline “makes no sense,” to which Conway interjected “that’s not true” as the NBC host continued his question.

Stephanopoulos' taped interview with Conway aired later in the “Good Morning America” broadcast, and he noted after its completion that it was the counselor to the president herself who had asked to come on the ABC morning show to talk about Flynn.

"That is one of the biggest questions right there," Stephanopoulos said to his “Good Morning America” co-hosts. "Why does the president have Kellyanne Conway — ask to have Kellyanne Conway come on our program today if she can't answer the simple yes-or-no questions about what happened with general Flynn?”

Conway pushed back Tuesday afternoon, writing on Twitter that she serves “at the pleasure of @POTUS. His message is my message.” Apparently firing back at those who attacked her performance Tuesday morning, the counselor to the president wrote that “uninformed chatter doesn't matter.” In a subsequent post, Conway wrote “here’s what matters” and linked to a Washington Examiner story headlined “Gallup poll finds clear majorities of Americans see Trump as strong leader who keeps promises.”

In a third post, Conway wished a happy Valentine’s day “to the hapless haters” and wrote “love you back” in response to praise from a Twitter user whose bio indicated an interest in white nationalism. Conway later deleted that post and suggested to BuzzFeed that she had not personally replied to the account in question and did not recognize it. She told BuzzFeed that “I don’t know who had access to my account" and added that “I denounce whoever it is. I’m going to find out who’s tweeting it. It will be immediately deleted. Everybody makes mistakes.”

The tweet appeared on Conway’s account during Spicer’s press briefing, where Conway was seated in one of the staff seats to the left of the podium. It was later deleted.

Even before her morning TV appearances, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" lit into Conway for suggesting a day earlier that Flynn's job was safe. Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC show's titular host, accused Conway of appearing on TV based only on her own whims and not on any guidance or strategy from others in the White House. The counselor to the president is "out of the loop," said Scarborough, a former GOP congressman whose show is said to be a favorite of President Donald Trump's.

"She's in none of the meetings and she just goes out without talking without having the facts," Scarborough said.

“Kellyanne Conway is a free agent. And they have complained. Everybody in the White House but Donald Trump has complained for months that she is a free agent. She goes out, she says whatever she wants to say. She doesn’t coordinate her message. And then she comes back in and they have to clean it up,” the "Morning Joe" host continued. “Now, she will lie, as she does every time the truth comes out. She will say she's being victimized. She will then go in and get a picture with the president and then she’ll get the president to tweet something and her staff – his staff – will have to clean this all up over and over again."

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, stepped down Monday amid controversy that he had discussed easing sanctions against Russia during a phone call with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Asked if such a conversation had ever occurred, Pence said it had not, a statement he made based on assurances from Flynn.

In his resignation letter, Flynn admitted that he had “inadvertently briefed the vice president-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador.”

Despite the building pressure on Flynn, Conway said Monday afternoon on MSNBC that Flynn “enjoys the full confidence of the president.” On Tuesday, Conway claimed that her Monday afternoon statement had been true at the time, but that by the end of the evening, Flynn had made the decision to resign all on his own.

Asked on the "Today" show how the president could have had “full confidence” in Flynn despite learning weeks ago about his misstatements to Pence and others, Conway said “the president is very loyal.”

“The fact is that general Flynn continued in that position and was in the presidential daily briefings, was part of the leader calls as recently as yesterday, was there for the prime minister's visit from Canada yesterday,” Conway said. “And as time wore on, obviously the situation had become unsustainable.”

Addressing a similar line of questioning on "Good Morning America," Conway was also unable to satisfy anchor Stephanopoulos, who repeatedly pushed the counselor to the president on why the White House allowed Flynn to continue to serve for weeks after learning of his misstatements to Pence. Conway said she could not reveal who in the White House knew the truth of Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador not only because such information would be "highly sensitive" but also because "I don't know all the details."

Asked specifically if either Trump or Pence were made aware of Yates' briefing when it was delivered weeks ago, Conway said she did not know.

"It’s a very fluid situation, it was obviously very fluid into the night. We were here very late last night," Conway told Stephanopoulos. "You're presuming that all the information you have there is completely factual and who knew what when, and this is very fluid."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Conway was given a warmer reception on Fox News's "Fox & Friends," where the trio of hosts did not push as strongly for an explanation as to why Flynn was kept on after the White House learned of his misstatements only to be dismissed once those misstatements were made public. Conway did say that "information had been forthcoming for a while. But the situation had gotten to, I think, a fever pitch yesterday, later in the day such that it became unsustainable."

Prompted by a remark from "Fox & Friends" anchor Ainsley Earhardt, Conway also chastised opponents of the White House who she characterized as celebrating Flynn's resignation.

"We wish General Flynn all the best. You’re right, he had 30 years serving our country and something like this, you just don't want that to taint his reputation after he’s sacrificed so much for our country," Earhardt said.

“I agree completely, Ainsley. We do. And also, we wish the president and the vice president the best as they find a new national security adviser,” Conway replied. “Some people are high fiving themselves today that somehow they got their wish. Folks, this is national security and intelligence and that means it affects us all.”