Kellyanne Conway’s thrashing of Mitt Romney was bad. Raising the possibility of prosecuting Hillary Clinton as her campaign pursues a recount — as Conway also did — is worse.
Both are signs that the divisive, vengeful agenda of Trump the candidate is being carried forward to a Trump White House. There’s an enemies list before the president-elect even takes the oath of office. And with Clinton, there’s a not-so-veiled threat Trump might use the power of the presidency to encourage the Justice Department to press criminal charges against his defeated rival. That’s pretty chilling.
Conway made news on the Sunday shows by joining forces with others, like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, who say Romney doesn’t deserve to be secretary of state because he famously trashed Trump during a speech last March. Yet where would Conway be if Trump demanded eternal loyalty from everyone who worked for him?
Certainly not taking the bow she is now, as the campaign manager who helped guide him to victory. She got her job with Trump after first working for a super PAC that supported Ted Cruz. In that previous role, she regularly trashed Trump on cable TV during primary season.
Why Romney wants to rush into Trump’s crazy circus tent is a good question. But if he did, there would occasionally be one serious, sensible, and sane plutocrat in the Oval Office.
In his March speech, Romney was tough indeed on Trump, calling him out as a bully and fraud, questioning his character and temperament, and challenging his acumen on domestic and foreign policy. In an example of one matter that comes under State Department purview, Romney said that Trump’s suggestion to let ISIS “take out’’ Syria’s Bashar al-Assad “has to go down as the most ridiculous and dangerous idea of the campaign season.’’ Trump, declared Romney, “tells us that he is very, very smart. I’m afraid that when it comes to foreign policy he is very, very not smart.’’
Whatever happens with Romney, that is Trump’s call, not Conway’s. After all, Trump overlooked what she said about him as a Cruz advocate. As summarized by Media Matters last August, Conway attacked Trump for his “unpresidential’’ and “vulgar’’ language, criticized him for having “built a lot of his business on the backs of the little guy,’’ and mocked him for whining and complaining that the Colorado primary was rigged, after he lost it to Cruz.
Whether or not Conway went rogue with her attack on Romney, as some now claim, it’s not good news for Republicans who might be hoping a Trump presidency could somehow unite the party. With her comments about Clinton, Conway sends an even darker message about the Trump World mindset.
To CNN’s Dana Bash, Conway said that Trump has been “incredibly gracious and magnanimous’’ about not prosecuting Clinton over her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state, “at a time when, for whatever reason, her folks are saying they will join in a recount to try to somehow undo the 70-plus electoral votes that he beat her by.’’
Conway’s words come after Trump told The New York Times he did not want to “hurt’’ the Clintons. But he’s happy to try to silence them, by letting Conway remind them of his generosity toward them in one breath while mentioning the recount process, which was launched by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, in the next. Conway also noted that Trump wouldn’t rule out a criminal probe “if the attorney general and the Congress find evidence that would indicate that something needs to happen.’’
Don’t waste any time shooting Trump’s messenger.
Those are Trump’s thoughts coming out of Conway’s mouth.
Joan Vennochi can be reached at vennochi@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @Joan_Vennochi.
