Kellyanne Conway and her anti-Trump daughter may
be the future of reality TV
Arwa
Mahdawi
Conway may be quietly sanctioning the Trump critics in
her family and hedging her bets in case he doesn’t win again
Sat 4 Jul
2020 14.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 4 Jul 2020 19.34 BST
‘I have no idea what goes on in Kellyanne’s heart, but
the woman certainly has a head for strategy.’
Keeping up
with the Conways
A leftist
TikTok teen has been trolling Donald Trump supporters and encouraging people to
leave one-star reviews on all of the president’s hotels and golf courses.
Nothing terribly surprising about that, right? Except this particular TikToker
is called Claudia Conway and she’s the daughter of Kellyanne Conway, one of
Trump’s most loyal advisers.
Claudia,
15, found herself in the spotlight this week after New York Times journalist
Taylor Lorenz tweeted about her anti-Trump content. She has since given a
number of interviews, describing herself as “100% leftist and liberal” and
telling Insider that she had “respectfully declined” her mother’s request to
delete her viral videos.
Claudia’s
very public rebellion is not exactly unprecedented: George Conway, Kellyanne’s
husband, has made a name for himself by tweeting snarky comments about Trump.
The relationship between George and Kellyanne has long been a subject of
fascinated speculation. Is the vocal political disagreement completely genuine?
Are they a heartwarming example of the power of love to conquer all (even, you
know, fascism)? Or is it all a carefully curated act? Are the pair angling for
a book deal or reality TV show?
Some of the
Conways’ inner circle have assured sceptics that it is absolutely not the
latter. “Those who think this is a 14-dimensional chess game are mistaken,”
says Rick Wilson, a Republican who, along with George Conway, is one of the
founders of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. According to Wilson, both George
and Kelly are dogged in their views towards Trump but have stayed together
regardless. “Who knows the secrets of the human heart?”
I have no
idea what goes on in Kellyanne’s heart, but the woman certainly has a head for
strategy. It’s worth remembering that she is entirely self-made, built her own
polling company from scratch and is the first woman in US history to have led a
successful presidential campaign.
Kellyanne
has spent her entire life looking at polls and trends; she may have no moral
compass but she’s adept at figuring out which way the wind is blowing. I would
not be surprised if she is quietly sanctioning the Trump critics in her family
and hedging her bets in case he doesn’t win another term. She works, after all,
for a reality TV star; she knows how to manufacture drama.
And this is
the woman, let us remember, who talks about “alternative facts” and invented
the “Bowling Green Massacre”. If she can conjure up a massacre, one imagines
she can spin family conflict to her advantage. Claudia may think she’s
rebelling against mum now but may eventually come to realize that, as usually
happens, her mother had the upper hand all along. Don’t be surprised if Keeping
Up With the Conways comes to a TV screen near you soon.
Kellyanne Conway's Daughter Is an Anti-Trump
TikTok Star: 'My Dad Thinks It's Awesome I'm Speaking for Myself'
"My mom is my best friend, but we do fight all
the time over politics," Claudia Conway says
By Sean
Neumann July 02, 2020 09:51 AM
Kellyanne
Conway's teenage daughter told Insider this week she "respectfully
declined" her mom's request to delete a number of viral anti-Donald Trump
videos she posted on TikTok, gaining hundreds of thousands of views (and
headlines) in the process.
Though
she's been posting off and on since 2015, 15-year-old Claudia Conway only found
herself in the spotlight this week after people began sharing clips from her
TikTok on Twitter — revealing another political divide within the Conway
family.
While mom
Kellyanne, 53, is counselor to the president and his former campaign manager,
Claudia's dad, George T. Conway III, a 56-year-old attorney, regularly assails
Trump online and helped found a conservative political group aimed at defeating
him.
The teen —
who according to Insider was interviewed with the permission of her dad, who
was also present — described herself as "100-percent leftist and
liberal" and detailed why she declined her mom's request to delete her
videos.
"I'm
not going to because I think I have a right to my own freedom of speech. If she
works for Trump, she works for Trump," Claudia told Insider, adding,
"My dad thinks it's awesome that I'm speaking for myself and expressing my
views."
In a
Tuesday interview with USA Today, Claudia said: "I know a lot of my
friends are so informed and I think they wouldn't be if it weren't for social
media, which is why I think using one's platform for good and for the education
of others is so, so important, especially in our day."
“Thank you
for all the love on my videos but just please no hate to my mom or my dad,
they’re both amazing people and I love them so much,” Claudia said in a recent
TikTok. “No hate to either of them, it’s just me and my views.”
(Kellyanne
did not comment to PEOPLE; George did not return an email seeking comment.)
Claudia's
TikTok account surged in recent days, with more than 90,000 followers as of
Thursday morning.
On Tuesday
afternoon, her page had roughly 30,000 followers with about tens of thousands
of views on each video. Now, some of her videos have hundreds of thousands of
views, including one with more than a million.
The posts
mix the usual teen TikTok content — memes, dances, time with friends — with
political opinions that began appearing more frequently a few weeks ago.
“Why do
people hate on Trump supporters, like can’t we just respect everyone’s
opinions? SIKE nah block me pls and then educate yourself,” Claudia posted in
one recent video.
"i
love trump, but replace ‘love’ with ‘think that we should extinguish,' "
she wrote in another.
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