The New York Times Gives Kellyanne Conway a Platform to Write That Everyone Against Trump Is a Loser

Is Donald Trump going to win the 2024 presidential election? With almost two years to go until voters head to the polls, it’s obviously incredibly difficult to predict. On the one hand, the fact that he lost in 2020 does not bode well for his prospects, nor does the 10-mile-long list of reasons he shouldn’t be allowed within a million feet of the Oval Office ever again. On the other hand, stranger, scarier things have happened, like Rudy Giuliani deciding an airport restaurant was an appropriate place to catch up on hair removal. One person you probably shouldn’t ask if you’re looking for an unbiased, accurate prediction of the ex-president’s chances? Former campaign manager and longtime adviser Kellyanne Conway. And yet, she’s been given an opportunity to do just that, in the paper of record no less.

Yes, in a nearly 2,000-word op-ed that ran in The New York Times on Friday, Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway lays out “The Cases for and Against Trump.” By that headline, you might think that, somehow, against all odds, the piece was an impartial look at the former president’s record. But this was written by Conway, and while she pretends to be a dispassionate sage, she gives up the game almost immediately, claiming that people who do not want to see the former guy made the leader of the free world again have no real reason to oppose him. Rather, she argues, anti-Trumpers have simply “never gotten over” the fact that he won the 2016 election, and have led sad, unproductive lives ever since.

Sayeth Conway:

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. There is no vaccine and no booster for it. Cosseted in their social media bubbles and comforted within self-selected communities suffering from sameness, the afflicted disguise their hatred for Mr. Trump as a righteous call for justice or a solemn love of democracy and country. So desperate is the incessant cry to “get Trump!” that millions of otherwise pleasant and productive citizens have become naggingly less so. They ignore the shortcomings, failings, and unpopularity of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and abide the casual misstatements of an administration that says the “border is secure,” inflation is “transitory,” “sanctions are intended to deter” Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine, and they will “shut down the virus.” They’ve also done precious little to learn and understand what drives the 74 million fellow Americans who were Trump-Pence voters in 2020 and not in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

While that last line might suggest Conway would have something further to say about the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and Trump’s role in it, it is the first and last time it is mentioned. Later, she writes:

The case against Trump 2024 rests in some combination of fatigue with self-inflicted sabotage, fear that he cannot outrun the mountain of legal woes, the call to move on, a feeling that he is to blame for underwhelming Republican candidates in 2022 and the perception that other Republicans are less to blame for 2022 and have more recent records as conservative reformers.

As Daily Kos contributing editor Laura Clawson points out, “the case against Trump 2024 also rests on the idea that people who attempt to overthrow the government should not be eligible for future office,” but apparently, Conway does not believe that to be the case.

Buried within Conway’s bullshit and spin is one line that actually rings true: that “shrugging off Mr. Trump’s 2024 candidacy or writing his political obituary is a fool’s errand.” Smarter people have made this argument, but as my colleague Molly Jong-Fast has written, that’s because the Republican Party has a long history of always backing Trump in the end, no matter what, up to and including insurrections. Which Conway, on the other hand, would have people believe isn’t even a factor in considering “the case…against Trump.”

Trump Organization fined literal pocket change for multiple felonies

We’re sure this effective slap on the wrist will make Trump‘s family business think twice before committing more crimes. Per The Wall Street Journal:

Donald Trump‘s family business was sentenced to pay $1.6 million in criminal fines following its tax-fraud conviction for using an off-the-books compensation scheme to pay some employees in perks, such as cars, rent-free apartments and cash. A New York jury in December found two Trump Organization entities guilty of a total of 17 criminal counts, including tax fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records. State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, imposed the penalty at a hearing Friday. The fines were the maximum allowed under the law, Justice Merchan said. He ordered the defendants to pay within 14 days.