President Trump calls CNN “fake news,” and White House press secretary Sean Spicer seldom takes questions from the network's journalists, but counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway could not get enough of CNN on Monday.
For 35 minutes, Conway sparred with anchor Chris Cuomo, mostly over press coverage. A standard TV appearance lasts five to 10 minutes, and Cuomo tried several times to wrap up the interview, saying that producers were telling him through an earpiece that the White House wanted to end it.
But Conway kept going, and CNN blew past one commercial break after another to let her spirited exchange with Cuomo play out.
“Your people say you have to go, by the way,” Cuomo told Conway at the 28-minute mark. “So you make sure that the White House press office doesn't yell at me. … I've got people yelling in my ear that you have to go.”
The whole episode made for riveting TV, largely because of the interpersonal dynamic. Cuomo told viewers after the interview finally concluded that he and Conway have known each other for many years, and it showed. Although each grew heated at times, neither became nasty; their mutual respect was apparent.
Conway's chief argument, which she has articulated before, is that the media devotes too much time to Russia-related developments and not enough time to other stories that she says are more important.
[Kellyanne Conway keeps her distance from Trump’s harshest media attacks]
Here's one brief but representative back-and-forth:
CONWAY: You want to talk about Russia. I want to talk about the opioid crisis in this country.
CUOMO: We talked about it on this show. I have a documentary coming out this fall.
So it went. Conway would criticize the media; Cuomo would reject the premise.
Coverage priorities are somewhat subjective, of course, and the White House and the press are unlikely to agree on them — under a Trump administration or any other.
What has distinguished the Trump White House from others has been the intensity of its anti-media rhetoric. As I noted when comparing CNN's Jim Acosta to Sam Donaldson recently, previous administrations have restricted press access in various ways but also have attempted to show some regard for reporters' basic integrity.
Trump, on the other hand, has referred to CNN and other major news outlets as “the enemy of the American people.”
Conway has broken from the president, in this regard. Besides ignoring the White House's urging to get off the air on Monday, she also has publicly refused to adopt Trump's language.
“As somebody who doesn't say 'fake news' or 'enemy of the people' or 'opposition party,' my grievance is the incomplete coverage,” she said on Fox News radio last week.
Unlikely as it might seem, Conway appears to be trying to find some middle ground between the White House and the media.