This morning's Intelligencer editorial, "Let's Put Conway Slip in Perspective," demonstrates how far the locals are willing to go to defend the Trump administration. Never mind that our local papers have had nothing to say about Kellyanne Conway's assertion that the Trump administration should be allowed "alternative facts":
“Why put him out there for the very first time, in front of that podium, to utter a provable falsehood?” Chuck Todd asked Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “It's a small thing, but the first time he confronts the public, it's a falsehood?”
After some tense back and forth, Conway offered this:
"Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving — our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that. But the point really is —"
At this point, a visibly exasperated Todd cut in. “Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts? Four of the five facts he uttered . . . were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods.”
Nor have they criticized her when she criticized the media for not covering the "Bowling Green massacre":
During a Thursday interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the counselor to the president defended President Trump’s travel ban related to seven majority-Muslim countries. At one point, Conway made a reference to two Iraqi refugees whom she described as the masterminds behind “the Bowling Green massacre.”
“Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered,” Conway said.
As the Washington Post concluded:
The Bowling Green massacre didn’t get covered because it didn’t happen. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Ky., carried out by Iraqi refugees or anyone else.
Okay, there's been nothing critical of Conway's use of "alternative facts" in either paper. (I guess the locals didn't want to appear hypocritical.) But now the Intelligencer is defending Conway on her verbal "slip" in which she told a television audience to go buy Trump's daughter's clothing and accessories. She did this while admitting it was a "free commercial" and despite the fact that such conduct clearly broke ethical rules. The Intelligencer dismisses it -- it was a "slip" and besides, what about Hillary Clinton? (Hillary? I can't make that up. They really do miss her.) We should all move on to "far greater ethics lapses." Sorry, but even some important Republicans had some difficulties with Conway's actions:
But House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz says that's not enough, calling what Kellyanne Conway did "wrong, wrong, wrong, clearly over the line, unacceptable."
Speaking later to Utah lawmakers, Chaffetz added: "Of course I'm going to call that out. My job is not to be a cheerleader for the president."
You're right, congressman, being a "cheerleader for the president" is left to newspapers like the Intelligencer.
