I think if you read the posts again, what you’ll find is that we said she’s great at her job. We think she’s the bee’s knees. Clinton’s emails are the real issue here and the American people deserve to know what’s on them.
When Trump brings this up, he always mentions that Russia says there’s nothing to it. Which, how shall I put it, is not exactly an effective appeal to authority.
If Trump weren’t Trump, I might suspect that this was one of those hostage-trying-to-commnunicate-over-the-phone-with-the-bad-guys-watching things. “Everything is fine here. There’s no reason to call the police. It would be silly to send a SWAT team.”
(But Trump is Trump, so it’s just him being an idiot.)
The criticism stands though, that her messaging depends entirely upon her audience being ignorant. She blatantly lies, constantly. It only works because Trump’s supporters simply do not care.
Yeah, ignorant and willing to accept anything she says, because of the cult of personality that her employer has.
She’s good at her job, yes. She knows how to play to her audience. But let’s not pretend that she is putting out brilliant spin above and beyond what we’ve seen anyone do before. I don’t know anyone who wasn’t already a fervent Trump supporter get swayed by anything she has to say.
But, let’s be fair, that isn’t what her job is. Her job is to keep the idiots in check by giving them enough cover that they can disengage their critical faculties and accept the answer given by Trump. To communicate his idiocy in more coherent sentence structure, because lord knows that gold face goldfish brains can’t keep a thought going long enough to complete it.
Yeah, and like I said, she knows how to play to her audience. She’s good at her job, no argument from me there. I just don’t think she’s some never-before-seen master of propaganda and spin like some people paint her as. If she was employed by, say… Jeb!, I don’t think anyone is having this conversation.
Conway is very adept at doing her job. She is photogenic, an excellent public speaker and an engaging personality. She is literally built for television, and she knows exactly how to appear confident and informed without crossing over into condescending or elitist. This plays perfectly to the Trump base, and they love her. They see a smart, confident and attractive woman who has risen to a position of great power by using her skills to combat the lying mainstream media and bring the Trump Truth to the masses. That is her job, and she’s doing it well.
Of course anyone who is not a Trump supporter sees right through it, because the message isn’t meant for us. This is what exasperates the media so much when dealing with Conway and some of the other top Trump surrogates. They are used to asking questions and either getting back answers or denials, points the media can then dissect, verify or and/or argue against. With Conway when you ask a question what you get back is misdirection, sometimes even nonsensical misdirection.
What do you do with that as a media person? You can’t refute it because there are no facts to refute, you can’t argue it because it’s not really a position, you can’t even fact check it because it’s already a known lie or meaningless statement All you can do is look stunned and try to ask the same questions again a different way hoping for an actual answer (which you’re not going to receive). Then, two hours later, the Trump camp releases statements saying “See how these media people are? They badger us with the same question over and over again when we’ve clearly given them an answer a hundred times already! Lying MSM! Fake news! Don’t trust the media!”
The only way to combat this tactic is to report the facts and not have a Trump surrogate present to confuse the issue. Even better, release a statement saying the Trump campaign refused to comment (even though you never asked them to), as that makes them look like they have something to hide. Stop letting Trump surrogates like Conway spew their drivel on your channels and they’ll be forced to hold press conferences of their own to respond, and we all saw how well that went Wednesday. Trump wants to control the media, so the media needs to get out in front of that and control Trump instead.
It won’t happen though because our media is too interested in being the first ones to catch Trump in some kind of slip up or the first ones to gain exclusive access and thereby “win” the media wars. They’re not smart enough to recognize Trump is already winning.
Yep, this is the problem. The media aways has an inane pundit there to incessantly lie over and over, rendering all normal news reporting completely useless. If they had employed the “no comment” strategy from the beginning then I think the election goes differently.
Conway has clearly shown she has no morals, no respect for other women, no empathy for humanity, etc. I have no idea how she can get up there and constantly lie to protect such a horrible person if the above isn’t 100% true.
Yes, I think it’d be reasonable to simply deny Trump surrogates a plaform from which to speak. Let them speak on Fox if that’s what Fox wants to do… but honestly, it won’t hurt anyone’s ratings to not have garbage like Conway or Macanany on TV. They aren’t ratings draws.
If that were true it would have already happened. I would guess that it’s the exact opposite.
So, will the next biography on The Donald be titled “The Manchurine Candidate” …?
… ahem.
I honestly think they just do it for some attempt to be “fair”. I don’t know anyone who tunes in to hear those imbeciles.
It’s a good question. I think maybe it’s just because it’s way easier to fill 10 minutes of airtime with a talking head who you just ask questions vs. having to come up with 10 minutes of unique produced content. With so many minutes to fill, the more interviews you have the better, probably, even if they’re super low quality.
From the network’s perspective, the great thing about Kellyanne is they know exactly what they’re gonna get - wind her up and she goes. She’s not going to disrupt things with novel arguments or facts or anything unexpected. And she’ll just keep on chattering until time is up.
Don’t forget “non-threatening” - her TV persona is calculated to be the exact opposite of someone like Megyn Kelly, who is bold, confident, and commanding in the way that male news anchors are. Conway is always coyly assertive, playfully sarcastic, or pout-y when disagreeing.
That isn’t what she does either. She distracts, attacks, and denies. She doesn’t rephrase Trump, she just says “I think he’s already addressed that” or “I don’t know what he thinks, we haven’t discussed it” and then undermines the critic instead of dealing with the critique. She does all this blatantly to the extent that everyone watching and the person she is talking to all go, “Hey look, you’re changing the subject again” to which she simply responds, “No, but I’m just trying to say…” and then puffs up some accomplishment. No one leaves that discussion saying, “Oh hey, now I understand what Trump was really doing and I agree with it.” They leave, at best, more confused than before, but mostly they just leave with the sense that Trump’s campaign doesn’t want to talk about the issue. So the question is, what’s the point of her appearance? Is the point simply that the networks feel they must have someone come on to defend Trump, and she lets them say they did that? Is the point that the networks think they can create controversy by asking questions of a surrogate? If it’s the latter, then I agree that she’s good at not creating controversy, but she’s not better than spokespeople for campaigns are supposed to be, she’s only better than Omarosa and talking heads like Giuliani.
True magic doesn’t feel like a trick. Every single Conway interview feels like she is doing some sort of judo to try to get out of saying anything useful. That’s why I don’t think she’s good at that job (though she’s clearly good at running an actual campaign, which is her real job). She might as well just say, “Well, I’m going to pivot away from that because I don’t think anyone gives a shit if I answer you” or just “Well we all know that what you said is true, but Trump gonna Trump, amirite people?” If the campaign spokesperson seems to contort every statement, blatantly lie, and abruptly change the subject all the time, then it leaves the impression that the campaign itself is a pile of lies and distractions hammered together by tortured logic. That may be what Trump’s campaign, transition, and soon his Presidency are, but the job of the TV surrogates isn’t to “survive” their interviews, it’s to actually convince people and make a sensible argument to get things done.
I will say this: her style perfectly fits Trump, and the alpha misogyny and DOS lies that are his way of life.
Exactly. She somehow transforms the stream of conscious babble that Trump vomits out into an almost coherent series of statement that makes sense at a superficial level. She does it an engaging fashion that gives her the appearance of reasonable. Many of the Trump surrogates were so bad that within 5 minutes you concluded that they were blathering idiots like their boss.
Kellyanne is also skillful enough not to try and defend everything he says. So for example rather than defend Trump’s pussy grabbing statements, she said he has apologizes and quickly pivot to attacking Hillary.
It is important to know your opponent and understand their strength and weakness. As long as Trump has Kellyanne Conway on his team, you know that he has an ace reliever in the bullpen who has a reasonable chance of saving the game even with the bases loaded and no outs at the bottom of the ninth.
I really think if Hitler had Kellyanne instead of hacks like Goebbels , The Man in the High Caste would be fact, not fiction.
Ya, but it’s not like she’s working some kind of miracle. She’s just immune to shame.
For you or I, we wouldn’t be able to do it with a straight face, because we’d be ashamed of lying in such an obvious manner. We’d feel bad about saying shit that made no sense or was obviously untrue.
She seemingly has none of that shame.
I’d love to know what the campaign is paying her, or if Trump’s even paying her (or anyone else) at all given his history.
I think she’s too smart to have not gotten paid up front.
I check these Trump threads a little bit for the discussion and information but mainly in hopes that I find out that he’s dead. Preferably while sitting on the toilet, tweeting.