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A super PAC formed by Never Trump Republicans and former Republicans including George Conway released an ad on Monday slamming the White House’s coronavirus response, and President Trump just couldn’t help but respond.
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The Lincoln Project’s “Mourning in America” ad, a play on Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election ad, is a one-minute spot that places the blame for the more than 60,000 coronavirus deaths (and counting) on a virus that “Donald Trump ignored.” It also slams Trump for “bail[ing] out Wall Street, but not Main Street.”
“There’s mourning in America, and under Donald Trump, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer,” the ad says.
In addition to Conway, the group’s advisers include former McCain operations chief Steve Schmidt, former John Kasich campaign manager John Weaver, and consultant and former Rudy Giuliani aide Rick Wilson.
Trump must have had trouble sleeping last night, because at 12:46am, he started tweeting about the “group of RINO [Republicans in Name Only] Republicans” who commissioned the ad.
Trump saved his harshest words for George Conway, the husband “Moonface” counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, and then capped off the rant by comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln for the second time in less than 48 hours:
George Conway shot back in a series of Tuesday morning tweets, including one that read: “I guess our next ad should be “Moron in America.”
Conway has long been one of Trump’s most high-profile critics, contributing anti-Trump columns regularly to the Washington Post as his wife serves as one of the president’s closest advisers. But though Trump has publicly ridiculed Conway before, this was his first Twitter acknowledgment of his adviser’s husband in over a year.
After the last time, Kellyanne Conway defended her boss. “He left it alone for months out of respect for me,” Conway told Politico in March 2019, after Trump called George Conway a “stone cold loser and a husband from hell!” in response to Conway accusing him of having a mental illness. “But you think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?”
If you’re wondering how all of this affects one of the weirdest marriages in America, the answer seems to be not great, according to a New York Times report from February in which Conway said he tweets about Trump partially so he doesn’t “end up screaming” at his wife.
Asked about the Conways, Rick Wilson told the Times: “Who knows the secrets of the heart?”
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Cover: President Donald Trump speaks during a Fox News virtual town hall from the Lincoln Memorial, Sunday, May 3, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
