George Conway, an attorney and the husband of White House senior counsel Kellyanne Conway, has posted a series of caustic tweets praising Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for tricking “dim-witted” President Donald Trump into “owning” the government shutdown.
Conway, referring to a video of the faceoff between the men and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the Oval Office in December, tweeted that Schumer “essentially uses Trump’s narcissism” — and “attempt at machismo” — to “get him to say ‘I will shut it down.’”
Schumer “almost can’t believe Trump is dim-witted enough to take the bait,” Conway added. “But of course Trump is.” Conway also praised Schumer for his “superhuman efforts to avoid bursting into laughter at Trump’s imbecility.”
Trump told Schumer then that he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security.” The president added: “I will be the one to shut it down. I won’t blame [Democrats] for it.”
The president later refused to sign a federal spending bill because it didn’t include $5.7 billion to begin work on his border wall. The impasse shut down part of the government and now is the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Trump is now referring to it as the “Schumer Shutdown.”
Conway also quoted a 2017 BuzzFeed article that cited an unnamed White House official who noted that Trump isn’t capable of playing the “sort of three-dimensional chess” strategy required in complex political situations. “More often than not he’s just eating the pieces,” Conway said in quoting the official.
Conway’s Twitter followers loved his tear.