During an appearance on CNN, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway insisted that "nobody" at the White House "talks about Hillary Clinton." Unfortunately for her, President Donald Trump has tweeted about Hillary Clinton––or “Crooked Hillary”––about 70 times since he became president, and his tweeting habits quickly undermined her defense.
“We don’t care about her. Nobody here talks about her,” Conway told CNN’s Chris Cuomo when asked whether Clinton is a regular topic of conversation at the White House. “Nobody here talks about Hillary Clinton, I promise you.”
But a quick look at the president's Twitter feed shows the president had, in fact, brought up Clinton multiple times.
Earlier that morning, for example, Trump tried, once again, to discredit the FBI's investigation into Russian interference, and insisted that the controversial dossier containing allegations of collusion with the Russian government compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele was not just "disproven" but "paid for by Democrats."
On Tuesday, the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released the unclassified transcript of the interview last August by Judiciary Committee members with Glenn Simpson, a founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, which the Clinton campaign retained to do opposition research on Trump. Simpson's testimony indicates that Steele was so disturbed by his discoveries that he chose to alert the FBI. Trump coined a new nickname for Feinstein––"Sneaky Dianne Feinstein"––in the process of trying to undermine the release of Simpson's testimony.
Trump's comments came mere hours after Conway had said, “Look, so many people still can’t get over the election results.”
Speaking at a joint White House news conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg yesterday, Trump mentioned Clinton while explaining why he believes it's important for the United States to "work with Russia."
“I am for massive oil and gas and everything else and a lot of energy,” he said. “Putin can’t love that. I am for the strongest military that the United States ever had. Putin can’t love that."
He continued: "Hillary was not for a strong military and Hillary — my opponent — was for windmills. And she was for other types of energy that don’t have the same capacities at this moment certainly."
The president mentioned Clinton yet again while responding to questions about meeting with special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump criticized the manner in which the FBI handled its 2016 interview with Clinton while she was under investigation for her use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
When you talk about interviews, Hillary Clinton had an interview where she wasn’t sworn in, she wasn’t given the oath, they didn’t take notes, they didn’t record and it was done on the Fourth of July weekend,” Trump said. “That’s, perhaps, ridiculous, and a lot of people looked upon that as being a very serious breach.”
For his part, Chris Cuomo countered Conway's assertions that the administration isn't fixated on Hillary Clinton. “Russian interference matters and it doesn’t delegitimize the president’s victory,” Cuomo said. “You guys are frozen in that moment. That’s why you bring up Hillary Clinton.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Conway replied. “I’ll never talk about her again, but then you can’t talk about the 2016 election.”
Conway attempted to clarify what she meant by her comments after the fact.
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