Seth Meyers and Kellyanne Conway have a bit of history.Before the counselor to President Trump invented a fake massacre—and repeated the claim no less than three times—to try and hawk her boss’s controversial “Muslim ban,” and before she coined the reality-denying term “alternative facts,” Kellyanne Conway appeared on Late Night, where she was thoroughly embarrassed by host Seth Meyers, who repeatedly called her out for her trademark obfuscation and pivoting.
And, on Thursday night’s edition of Late Night, Meyers took it to Conway once more.
But first, he addressed President Trump’s spat with Nordstrom over the clothing retailer choosing to drop the fashion line of his daughter (and presumptive first lady) Ivanka. When the news broke, the president of the United States tweeted the following:
Cue Meyers. “Is it terrible that she pushes you to do the right thing, or is she terrible at pushing you to do the right thing?” he asked. “Another worrisome thing about Trump’s tweet is that it was written at 10:51 a.m. But according to the president’s daily schedule, he was supposed to be receiving his daily intelligence briefing at 10:30 a.m. So, is Trump skipping out on an intelligence briefing to tweet about his daughter’s business?”
When pressed on that very question during a press conference, press secretary Sean Spicer, whose raccoon tan makeup job is starting to look increasingly Trump-like, said, “I’ve heard the conjecture. He was free when that happened.”
“OK, but here’s my question: Why was he free when that happened? Did the briefing really take less than 20 minutes?” asked Meyers. “I feel like the president’s daily intelligence briefing should take longer than an episode of Vanderpump Rules. Also, if he was tweeting about Nordstrom right after the briefing, something tells me he wasn’t totally focused during the briefing.”
Then, he got to Conway, who appeared on Fox News Thursday morning and openly advertised Ivanka Trump’s products from the White House Briefing Room.
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff… it’s a wonderful line, I own some of it,” said Conway on Fox News. “I’m going to just give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
The White House said they’ve “counseled” Conway about her statement, while Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Elijah Cummings, the leaders of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the Office of Government Ethics to see if Conway’s comments constituted an ethics violation. “This appears to be a textbook violation of government ethics laws and regulations enacted to prevent the abuse of an employee’s government position,” wrote Rep. Cummings.
For those who don’t know, federal regulations state that an “employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity.” Conway appears to have violated that statute.
“From now on, the only network Kellyanne Conway should be allowed on is QVC,” joked Meyers.
“And incidentally, before you take Conway’s advice and run out and buy Ivanka Trump’s products, you might want to consider that some of her scarves were recalled last year because they do not meet the federal flammability standards for clothing textiles posing a burn risk,” he added. “Of course, those were the old flammability standards. I’m sure they’ll be looser in a Trump administration.”Indeed, Ivanka’s scarves were recalled in April of last year over those concerns.
They were also made in China.
