Yesterday afternoon, Kellyanne Conway, President Donald Trump’s counsellor, was receiving a training that would allow her to obtain top-secret security clearances when an aide came to pull her out of the meeting.
That morning, Conway had appeared on Fox News. The big issue of the day was a tweet from Trump attacking the department store Nordstrom for dropping his daughter Ivanka’s clothing line. Conway came to the Trump campaign, last year, in part through Ivanka, and, like all Trump aides, she understands that staying in the good graces of Trump's children is key to survival in his court. “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would tell you,” Conway said with a wide smile, while sitting in front of the official White House seal in the James Brady Briefing Room. “It’s a wonderful line. I own some of it. I fully—I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
The comments were a clear violation of a federal rule that prohibits government officials from using “public office to endorse any product, service or enterprise.” Both inside and outside the White House, Conway’s violation set up a test: Would congressional Republicans, especially those with oversight responsibilities, condemn the remark? Would the White House rebuke her? What would Trump do?
Trump has at least four senior officials vying for alpha status in the West Wing: Conway; Reince Priebus, his chief of staff and nominally the person in charge; Steve Bannon, the chief strategist, who has been the architect of Trump’s early actions; and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and enforcer.
“Trump famously pits this one against the other,” a top White House official said, recounting the events of the day. “He’s like, ‘So and so is amazing, maybe smarter than you!’ He’ll just tease us.”
To stay on top, being by the President’s side is crucial. Priebus, for example, has a deputy, Katie Walsh, who previously worked with him at the Republican National Committee and who has taken on many of the responsibilities of a traditional White House chief of staff so that Priebus can remain glued to Trump. The situation has irritated the anti-Priebus faction. “Reince is a glorified bodyman,” one longtime Trump adviser said. “I don’t see how he has time for his responsibilities.”
Conway’s lack of clearance for high-level national-security discussions was increasingly leaving her out of the inner circle. Trump frequently asked Conway why she wasn’t in meetings, and Conway had to explain that she was waiting for her top-secret clearance. All that was left, for her to gain the access that her male rivals have, was to finish the training yesterday. But her comments about Ivanka pulled her off track.
“Kellyanne has been counselled,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said during his daily briefing with reporters, when asked about her blatant product endorsement. “She's been counselled on that subject.” The opaque comment had Conway’s allies scrambling, and she was retrieved from her intelligence training. Was she being thrown under the bus by her rivals, or was this simply the least harmful way to rebuke her? There was a “nefarious” explanation and an “anodyne” explanation, the top White House official said.
As the controversy reverberated around Washington, Trump, Conway, White House lawyers, and senior staff members met to discuss the matter. Conway thought the prohibition against commercial endorsements was overly broad. Hadn’t Michelle Obama made commercial endorsements by wearing J. Crew clothes or by promoting certain fashion designers? “What if you had worn a Tom Brady jersey the day after the Super Bowl?” she asked Spicer, who is a New England Patriots fan. “If I show up in an Ivanka Trump dress, I’m violating it?”
Bannon and Priebus represent well-defined camps in the White House, but Conway has attempted to straddle the divide. “Kellyanne is more of a floater,” one Republican close to the White House said. “She’s more for the party of Kellyanne, most of the time.” Her ultimate source of power comes from Trump. What he would say in front of the large group was more important than what Spicer said from the podium.
The President was unimpressed by Spicer’s remarks, according to the top White House official. “Who came up with that word?” he asked about the choice of “counselled.” “It makes her look like a child. She was defending a woman who she thought was being attacked. It sounds like she’s a child and is being reprimanded and is in counselling.”
By late afternoon, the issue had continued to spiral. Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who, as the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has been a loyal defender of the Trump White House, joined with his Democratic colleague Elijah Cummings to send a surprisingly stern letter about the issue. Chaffetz and Cummings asked the Office of Government Ethics to make a recommendation to the White House that “appropriate disciplinary action (such as reprimand, suspension, demotion, or dismissal) be brought against” Conway.
“The best-case scenario is that she—and others in the White House—have a dangerously amateurish understanding of ethics laws,” a G.O.P. aide in Congress told me. “Not being allowed to promote a particular company, brand, organization in your official government capacity is stuff staff assistants on the Hill know the first month of the job. It’s hard to chalk it up to ignorance—especially with someone like Kellyanne, who I think probably has close to the most institutional government knowledge of anyone currently in the West Wing working directly for Trump.”
As criticism from the Hill and additional questions from the media poured in, the White House released a statement to the Associated Press. It said that Trump “absolutely” supports Conway and that the President "understands she was merely sticking up for a wonderful woman who she has great respect for and felt was treated unfairly."
For ethics watchdogs and many in the press, Conway's product endorsement was the latest troubling example of the Trump White House's mixing of business and public service. But, inside the building, the episode was mostly seen not as a major ethics issue but as a political problem. "In the campaign, the opponent was Hillary Clinton. Who is the opponent here?" the top White House official said. "Who is the enemy? Is it Schumer and the Democrats? Is it Elizabeth Warren? Is it the media? Or is it the élites?"
Conway is not out of the woods. The White House will soon have to deal with any recommendation from O.G.E. and follow-up from Chaffetz and Cummings. But it’s doubtful that Trump will allow Priebus to hand out any serious punishment. Privately and publicly, Trump has indicated that he opposed his own spokesman’s mild rebuke of Conway and that he supported Conway's evangelizing for Ivanka. The head of the O.G.E. has previously rebuked Trump himself, making the President even less likely to follow his advice.
Reached late last night, Conway, referring to the song used in the popular "Saturday Night Live" skit about her last year, said, sarcastically, “I’m walking on sunshine.”