CNN’s Anderson Cooper had White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on his show Tuesday night to talk about the stunning news that President Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey.
Cooper played Conway a series of clips from the 2016 presidential campaign in which Trump lavished praise on Comey. (On Oct. 31, Trump said that Comey had “guts” to re-open the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.)
“Thanks for the trip down memory lane,” Conway responded. “I was on your show often last fall saying we were going to win Michigan and how we were going to do it, so that was fun.”
As Conway was talking, Anderson did this (shout out to CNN’s Brenna Williams for the GIF and you can watch the full interview above):
Which is what we were all thinking.
Here’s why: When asked about the ongoing Russia investigation — or any other topic they’d rather not talk about — the Trump White House insists there is no point in “relitigating” the past. Asked during Tuesday’s press briefing about the 18 day gap between when the White House learned national security adviser Michael Flynn may have been compromised by the Russians and when Trump fired Flynn, White House press secretary Sean Spicer responded: “We’re not going to relitigate the past on this. think we’ve been very clear as to what happened and why it happened. I think the president made the right decision, and we’ve moved on.”
The problem with that defense is that Trump loves to relitigate the past — in particular the 2016 election. During an interview to mark his 100th day in office, Trump handed out electoral maps with the counties he won marked in red. At his 100 day speech in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania he went on a long tangent about how no one thought he could win Pennsylvania and then he did.
At every turn, literally, Trump finds a way to mention how a) he won and b) everyone said he wouldn’t. Ditto all of Trump’s spokespeople — including Conway.
So:
1. There’s no point in relitigating the past.
2. Did we mention that Trump won the 2016 election?
Those two things just don’t go together. Or pass the smell test. An eyeroll is the right response here.
And Cooper’s was good, but not as good as this one: