Kellyanne Conway Turns the Tables on CNN's Dana Bash in Biden Scandal Debate
Kellyanne Conway doesn’t back down.
She proved that on the campaign trail in 2016.
She’s proved it over and over again as White House counselor during the Trump presidency while handling the anti-Trump media with a wit too quick for preening peacocks like CNN’s Jim Acosta.
And she proved it again on Sunday in a “State of the Union” clash with CNN’s Dana Bash.
In a conversation about the now-infamous July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, Bash tried to trot out the line that it proved Trump had committed some unspecified offense that was worthy of Democrats’ efforts to impeach him.
But Conway turned the tables right back on her.
Bash repeatedly tried to suggest that Trump had used the phone call to try to get a foreign power to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden simply for the political advantage it might provide in a 2020 presidential election.
“That is his political rival, and at its core, regardless when that happened, he’s asking — he is asking another leader to look into an American politician. That is OK with you?” Bash asked Conway.
Conway responded that Trump was talking about possible Ukraine-based meddling in the 2016 election and Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity firm that investigated the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer system.
“What is fine with me is the day after [former special counsel] Bob Mueller’s testimony, which was as big of a bomb as the Mueller report despite the fact that for two-plus years everyone in this town talked about nothing but, we spent $35 million in taxpayer dollars — and the very next day the president of the United States is saying to the president of Ukraine, ‘I’d like you to look back at 2016 — I heard about Crowdstrike 2016 and people are talking about this prosecutor,'” Conway said.
“Had nothing to do — he doesn’t mention 2020.”
But Bash persisted. Since Trump was talking about Biden, she indicated, the conversation must have been aimed at getting dirt for the 2020 election.
And that’s when Bash’s pro-Biden bias came to the surface.
“Even if Joe Biden were not running for president and still a private citizen going off into the sunset, would it be OK for the president of the United States, yes or no, to ask another foreign leader to investigate an American citizen?” she asked.
Well, first of all, Joe Biden is not just another private citizen going off into the sunset. He is, in fact, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, hoping to win the most powerful office in the country.
That alone should make any journalist interested in the strong possibility that Biden had engaged in corrupt activities while he was the vice president.
Second, there’s the little matter of Biden being caught on video boasting about how he strongarmed the previous Ukraine government to fire a prosecutor who just so happened to be investigating the very company that was paying Biden’s son, Hunter, an obscene salary of $50,000 a month for services that have never really been explained.
Bash’s question ignored all that, of course, and sounded “like a very oversimplified presentation of what is happening here,” Conway said.
“What is happening here is the president of the United States said, people are talking about this prosecutor and, excuse me, in this investigation,” she said. “And we have Joe Biden bragging on tape in January of 2018, and ‘I said I would be on the ground in 90 more minutes, and if you don’t believe me call Barack.’”
And then Bash laid the liberal cards on the table.
“For the record, there is no evidence that Joe or Hunter Biden did anything wrong,” she said.
Of course there isn’t — not to a member of the liberal media. That’s why, in the middle of the October Democratic primary debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper took it upon himself to declare that Biden had been “falsely accused” of corruption in his son’s lucrative dealings with Ukraine.
But Conway was ready for Bash’s remark — and turned the tables right back.
“There is no evidence that Donald Trump did anything wrong,” she said.
As a rejoinder, it was about perfect.
The same liberal media talking heads who will trip over themselves to declare Joe Biden innocent of any wrongdoing — despite his son’s ridiculous sweetheart job, despite Biden’s own bragging on a video — are already acting as though Trump has not only been impeached but that he would be convicted if it weren’t for a Senate Republican majority.
In the case of the Bidens, father and son, the “evidence” includes the son’s own admission that he would likely not have gotten a consulting job with the Ukraine energy company Burisma Holdings without his family connection.
The “evidence” includes the former vice president declaring on video that he got the prosecutor investigating that company fired — and used a $1 billion loan guaranty financed by the American taxpayers to do it.
In the Trump case, the “evidence” includes the transcript of a phone call available to all to read that includes no quid pro quo. It includes the word of the Ukraine president saying he was not pressured by Trump.
But to the media, what Americans can see and hear for themselves means nothing next to the mutters of a discontented, politically biased whistleblower and an angry Army lieutenant colonel who apparently thinks Army lieutenant colonels outrank the president of the United States when it comes to foreign policy.
Conway made all that clear with one deadly line that killed Dana Bash’s whole line of questioning.
Moments like those show you why Kellyanne Conway never backs down — because she doesn’t have to.
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