The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” said on Monday that the White House counselor Kellyanne Conway complained extensively about President Trump in private conversations with them before he was elected.
Mika Brzezinski said during Monday’s broadcast that she heard Ms. Conway denounce the candidate in private after promoting him on television.
“She would get off the air, the camera would be turned off, the microphone would be taken off, and she would say ‘Blech, I need to take a shower,’ because she disliked her candidate so much,” Ms. Brzezinski said of Ms. Conway.
Joe Scarborough, Ms. Brzezinski’s co-host and fiancé, echoed the statements, saying that Ms. Conway said after being interviewed that she had only taken the job for money and that she would soon be done defending Mr. Trump.
“ ‘But first I have to take a shower, because it feels so dirty to be saying what I’m saying,’ ” Ms. Brzezinski added, mocking what the hosts said was Ms. Conway’s attitude at the time. “I guess she’s just used to it now.”
A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Conway began the 2016 election working for a super PAC that supported Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, but she joined the Trump campaign after Mr. Cruz dropped out of the race. She became Mr. Trump’s campaign manager in August, appearing frequently on television in support of him.
Ms. Brzezinski said in February that she would no longer book Ms. Conway on the show, because she and Mr. Scarborough had come to believe that the White House counselor was prone to spreading falsehoods. On the air last week, she renewed that criticism, calling Ms. Conway “not credible” and chiding CNN for featuring Ms. Conway.
"Your hosts look pained when they interview her because they know they’re just doing politics porn,” Ms. Brzezinski said, addressing the rival network.
Ms. Conway has been a frequent target of media critics since she justified the White House’s reports about the size of Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd by calling them “alternative facts” in January. A clip of Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor, rolling his eyes at her during an interview drew attention last week, and Ms. Conway later called the reaction “possibly sexist,” and saying that it was typical of an anti-Trump bias in the media.
The hosts of “Morning Joe,” fixtures of the same Washington punditry scene that Ms. Conway has frequented since the 1990s, have in the past enjoyed a congenial relationship with Mr. Trump, who reportedly offered to officiate their wedding. But they have criticized him more harshly in recent months, and Mr. Trump has said in interviews that he has stopped watching the network.
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