According to former White House aide Cliff Sims, Kellyanne Conway is a top “leaker” in the Trump administration.
But Sims, author of the newest White House tell-all “Team of Vipers,” told Stephen Colbert Monday night that Trump will never fire Conway because she has proven herself to be fiercely loyal, at least on TV.
Sims: Trump will never fire Conway
Speaking with Colbert on “The Late Show” Monday night, Sims explained why Trump hasn’t fired Kellyanne Conway, one of his closest and longest-serving advisers, even though, as Sims claims, she is a back-stabbing leaker.
Sims is not the first to make this claim, but his book provides a particularly salacious anecdote of West Wing treachery. According to Sims, who was a communications aide, Conway once asked him to write a response to allegations from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that she was bad-mouthing Trump behind his back.
Sims said that he saw text messages from Conway’s iPhone that were synced with her MacBook popping up on the laptop screen while he was writing the statement. The texts showed Conway trashing Trump and White House staffers to several journalists.
Colbert asked Sims why Trump had not fired or criticized Conway yet. “It makes no sense to me. He’ll attack anyone. Why not her?”
“One thing that never goes out of style in the Trump White House is someone who’s willing to go out on TV and just fight it out with somebody. He knows she will go out there on any show and defend him,” Sims replied. “Public loyalty is of the utmost importance to him.”
Conway is one of Trump’s closest advisers and, as his final campaign manager, helped him win the presidency. She has regularly made media appearances to fend off criticism of his policies and even sided publicly with her boss against criticism from her husband.
Trump trashes “made up stories”
According to media reports, Sims’ book depicts Conway in a thoroughly negative light. He describes her as a Machiavellian “cartoon villain,” comparing her to Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians, who calculates her every move to stay on top in the ambitious, cutthroat environment of the White House. Conway denied Sims’ characterization of her, saying that she “prefers to knife people from the front, so they see it coming.”
Speaking with reporters last week as excerpts were released, Conway defended herself against Sims’ claims, asking journalists one-by-one, “Do I leak to you?” She also said that nobody at the White House is talking about Sims’ book and likened scabrous memoirs written by former Trump staffers to the movie Groundhog Day.
“Every couple of months we get this new book that’s bombshells from a former staffer, often somebody who has been forced out,” she said.
The book, which came with a seven-figure advance for Sims, depicts the Trump White House as a place of intrigue and chaos with scurrilous anecdotes about Trump and his relationships with disloyal subordinates. But it may not be as thoroughly negative in its depiction of Trump as previous narratives. According to some reviews, it depicts Trump and Melania’s relationship positively, describes the first lady as “protective,” and paints Trump as an occasionally sympathetic figure.
Still, Trump is no more a fan of opportunists selling stories of White House drama than he is of anonymous leakers. Like a certain White House staffer who wrote an ephemeral “tell-all” book before him, Sims was berated by Trump, who referred to the former aide as a “gofer” who wrote “made up stories.” The Trump campaign is now planning to sue Sims for violating an NDA agreement.
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