George Conway. (Getty)
Just after White House counselor Kellyanne Conway chastised the media for scrutinizing tweets send out by President Donald Trump, her husband, George Conway, did just that. He tweeted for the first time in two years to criticize a tweet Trump sent out that bashed his own Justice Department and the second immigration executive order Trump signed himself.
“The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.,” Trump wrote.
George Conway later retweeted that message, adding, “These tweets may make some [people] feel better, but they certainly won’t help OSG [Office of Solicitor General] get 5 votes in SCOTUS [Supreme Court], which is what actually matters. Sad.”
This was George Conway’s first tweet in two years and came from an unverified account. However, The Washington Post’s Matt Zapotosky reports that he confirmed with Conway that it is his personal Twitter account.
In his tweet, Trump complained that the second executive order he signed on immigration in March was a “watered down” version of the original order he signed just days after taking office in January. The new order, which Trump has repeatedly referred to as a “travel ban” in tweets after Saturday’s terror attack in London, bars citizens from Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan from entering the U.S. for 90 days. The new order made it clear that anyone with a green card or anyone who already has a visa will not be effected by the ban.
However, the ban has been on hold because of several court rulings. Trump is now trying to get the ban before the Supreme Court. “People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN,” the president tweeted this morning.
George Conway’s statement came a short time after Conway appeared on the Today Show and told the anchors that there is an “obsession” with covering everything Trump says on Twitter and not what he does as President. The Today anchors then noted that it’s his preferred form of communication. Conway then objected to that, but the Today anchors pointed out that Trump hasn’t given an interview in three weeks.
George Conway was considered a frontrunner to be Solicitor General, whose job it is to represent the government before the Supreme Court. After that job went to Noel Francisco, George Conway was considered to be the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division. But in a statement to Politico on June 2, he took himself out of the running.
“I have reluctantly concluded, however, that, for me and my family, this is not the right time for me to leave the private sector and take on a new role in the federal government,” George Conway said in a statement. “Kellyanne and I continue to support the President and his Administration, and I look forward to doing so in whatever way I can from outside the government.”
George Conway is a partner at the Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz law firm. The Conways have been married since 2001 and have four children, Claudia, George IV, Charlotte and Vanessa.
