Kellyanne Conway’s Husband is Off Message

George Conway is a lawyer who was in consideration for a top Justice Department post before recently withdrawing his name from consideration. He is also the husband of Trump counselor and PR guru Kellyanne Conway. Which made this tweet so surprising:

These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won’t help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad. https://t.co/zVhcyfm8Hr

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

Conway was referring to this and other similar tweets from Trump:

The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

He’s completely correct, by the way—the reason the travel ban has been struck down by federal courts across America is that Trump’s language is a dead giveaway that the ban is all about discrimination—not national security—and is therefore unconstitutional. Now that the case may go to the Supreme Court, it’s incumbent upon Trump and his team to prove these judges wrong. But when he tweets that the current version is “too PC,” he’s essentially giving weight to the enemy’s argument, and not only telegraphing his belief that it should be discriminatory, but also this, from WaPo:

Omar C. Jadwat, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, wrote that Trump’s tweets amounted to “a promise: let me do this and I’ll take it as license to do even worse.” In an interview, Jadwat said the president’s tweets “seem to undermine the picture the government’s been trying to paint.”

Other lawyers opposed to Trump are openly gloating at the ammo they’re being given by the president:

Its kinda odd to have the defendant in HawaiivTrump acting as our co-counsel.We don’t need the help but will take it! pic.twitter.com/8ehqkLkOY2

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) June 5, 2017

All of this buffoonery is par for the course for Trump. But for the spouse of one of his top PR henchwomen to go off message is fairly extraordinary. In later tweets, Conway acknowledged that he supported the ban, but doubled down on Trump’s error in sending those tweets. Dissent in the ranks!