Kellyanne Conway is suddenly very worried about fact-checking

Senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway claimed on Wednesday that she worries that there is “very little fact-checking” done in books about Donald Trump.

Conway’s remarks came after she was questioned about an upcoming book from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. The Trump administration has sued Bolton before the book’s release.

The book reportedly contains several personally embarrassing revelations about Trump.

Without making any specific claims, Conway said that she had seen errors in previous books that have exposed the inner workings of the Trump administration. She called on reporters to apply fact-checking to “all types of work.”

In her role as part of the administration, Conway has frequently lied and misled both reporters and the public.

Most infamously, Conway invented a terrorist attack she dubbed the “Bowling Green Massacre” while attempting to defend the administration’s travel ban on Muslims. And just two weeks ago, Conway claimed it was a “mischaracterization” to call Trump’s photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Park a photo-op.

From a June 17 press availability:

KELLYANNE CONWAY: I think if you’re wrong about small things, you’re wrong about big things. And I really do worry that there is very little fact-checking in these books.

 

I’ve seen ones that have been completely wrong. I’ve seen quotes attributed to somebody when it was obviously somebody else in that private meeting who said it. Not that the private meeting should be revealed in any circumstance without permission.

 

But that’s a concern too, which is, what are the fact checking, what are the rigors?

 

And again, I know that you’re all for fact-checking, so I hope you’ll apply that to all types of work.

 

It’s not about just the Bolton book, I mean all types of work, because you haven’t in the past. There have been many errors in all these books that, as long as they’re scintillating, as long as they don’t get the story, they get the president and the people around him, we just go with it, we go with it. “That’s Simon and Schuster’s problem.”

 

No, it’s your problem independently. You need to make sure that those facts are right also.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.