White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway responded to a reporter’s questions about President Donald Trump’s white supremacist, xenophobic attack on Progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.)—four newly elected BIPOC congresswomen—by asking him, “What’s your ethnicity?”
Andrew Feinberg, a White House reporter for Breakfast Media, asked Conway Tuesday morning: “If the president was not telling these four congresswomen to return to their supposed countries of origin, to which countries was he referring?”
Conway responded, “What’s your ethnicity?”
“Why is that relevant?” Feinberg replied.
“Because I’m asking a question. My ancestors are from Ireland and Italy,” Conway responded.
Feinberg insisted that Conway’s question was not relevant to her addressing Trump’s racism, but Conway deflected, ultimately refusing to answer his question.
“[Trump] is tired, a lot of us are sick and tired of this country of America coming last to people who swore an oath of office,” Conway ranted. “[We’re] sick and tired of our military being denigrated, sick and tired of the Customs and Border Patrol people that I was this—who are overwhelmingly Hispanic, by the way, in McAllen, Texas—being criticized, being doxxed, by Hollywood D-Listers who have nothing else to do but sit on their asses on Twitter all day and try to dox brave men and women.”
Since then, Conway took to social media, saying that she meant no offense by her question, tweeting: “This was meant with no disrespect. We are all from somewhere else ‘originally’. I asked the question to answer the question and volunteered my own ethnicity: Italian and Irish. Like many, I am proud of my ethnicity, love the USA & grateful to God to be an American.”