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<\/a>President Harry Truman\u2019s daughter wanted to be a singer. When one reviewer gave her a bad review, her Daddy reacted as Daddies do and sent the man a letter in which he called him an obscene name.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t really think this is a straight-across comparison between the situation with President Trump and the recent cancellation by Nordstrom of his daughter\u2019s fashion line. I don\u2019t see them as the same thing.<\/p>\n
Margaret Truman was a young woman in her first trembling attempts at building a professional life. Ivanka Trump is a multi-billionaire, who, as Kellyanne Conway has stated, has run parts of her father\u2019s business empire.\u00a0This is not a trembling young thing, just starting out. And it\u2019s not about one performance. It\u2019s a business decision based on what is a big business venture of starting a fashion line.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, the two situations bear enough symmetry that I\u2019m not disturbed by President Trump\u2019s twitter tantrum over Nordstrom cancelling his daughter\u2019s fashion line. If he in any way tries to use the powers of his office to push her business ventures, then I\u2019ll have another opinion. But a father, shooting his mouth off in defense of his daughter, doesn\u2019t bother me.<\/p>\n
The real story here involves Kellyanne Conway, the pro life woman who had a great deal to do with President Trump\u2019s win, and who has been his mouthpiece for months now. Time was, I was a big supporter of Mrs Conway. I saw her as the pro life canary in the Trumpian mine shaft. I backed down about writing about the election largely because someone I trust with National Right to Life assured me that KellyAnne Conway was proof that candidate Trump would stick to his new position on abortion.<\/p>\n
I really admired Mrs Conway at that time.<\/p>\n
But she has lost a lot of her luster, at least with me, because of her continuous lying. It gets tedious, listening to her rip off one shameless lie after another.<\/p>\n
So, it\u2019s a big surprise to me that I\u2019m stepping up in her defense with this blog post today. Evidently, Mrs Conway, in her role as President Trump\u2019s mouthpiece, launched a defense of Ivanka Trump and her cancelled clothing line. She rambled a lot, but the gist of it was that Ivanka is great.<\/p>\n
Ok. So far, so good.<\/p>\n
Then, she added a punch line, urging people to go out and \u201cBuy Ivanka.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was a stupid thing to say. Mrs Conway was speaking as the Senior Counsel for the President of the United States, and she opened her yap and told people to go out and put money in the president\u2019s daughter\u2019s purse. No doubt about it, it was an ethics violation.<\/p>\n
But it was also \u2014 or it certainly appeared to be \u2014 an off-the-cuff comment that wasn\u2019t said with the intent to break any laws. It was a foot-in-mouth moment from someone who spends a lot of time in front of cameras.<\/p>\n
I do not think that Mrs Conway committed an intentional ethics violation. I think she just accidentally said the wrong thing.<\/p>\n
I can tell you right now, I couldn\u2019t do what Mrs Conway does. If I spent that much time running my mouth in front of cameras, they\u2019d have a lot better stuff than this to use against me. It\u2019s just too easy to put your foot wrong \u2014 or perhaps I should say, put your mouth wrong \u2014 and come out with something that can be blown up to big proportions and used to do you harm.<\/p>\n
Mrs Conway has been having a lot of bad press moments lately. There\u2019s her ridiculous statement that the Trump administration was offering \u201calternative facts.\u201d Then, we have the \u201cBowling Green Massacre\u201d goof. And now this.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s obviously getting worn down by being in front of the cameras so much. And frankly, the strain of continuously lying may be eating at her, too.<\/p>\n
Whatever\u2019s going on, I think formal\u00a0ethics charges are way over the top. If she or the President do more than this, if, say, they begin to use the White House to promote Ivanka\u2019s business, then that\u2019s another matter. But I think this one-time foot-in-mouth should be called out so that it doesn\u2019t happen again, and then dropped.<\/p>\n