Kellyanne Conway said the mood at the White House was “euphoric and triumphant” following Robert Mueller’s Wednesday testimony before two House committees, but said President Donald Trump was “modest in his victory lap” because he’s focused on more important things.
The White House adviser told Fox News’ Jesse Watters that Trump “has been modest in his victory lap this week because he’s so busy doing great things for this country.”
“They’ll never apologize”
In her interview, which aired Saturday evening, Conway told Watters that while Trump might be acting humble after his big win, the president still deserves an apology for the investigation and the Democrats’ failure to accept its results.
“When are people going to apologize?” she asked. “You’ve put private citizens through litigation, investigation, harassment, trying to embarrass them. And now, Jerry Nadler in his press conference on Friday basically saying they are going to go to court to enforce these subpoenas.”
But according to Watters, that apology isn’t coming anytime soon.
“You’ll never hear an apology because that would be an admission that they lied for two years,” Watters told Conway. “No, they’ll never apologize. And you know what? The president is the most modest. Some people say he is the most modest person in the world and that modesty is his best quality, Kellyanne. I think everybody agrees on that.”
A modest victory
In tweets following Mueller’s testimony, President Trump indeed declared victory. He shared a clip of Nadler looking sad followed by footage of himself announcing: “[The] Democrats had nothing. And now they have less than nothing.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2019
The president went on to claim multiple times after Mueller’s testimony that he was “exonerated,” though Mueller stopped short of admitting the same. Indeed, Mueller’s focus on that word in his report and on Wednesday led many Republicans to point out that a legal investigation does not ever exonerate someone — it merely fails to find them guilty when the evidence isn’t there to do so.
Looking forward
Of course, Democrats are set on the fact that Mueller didn’t not find Trump not guilty. But even with the support of about 100 Dems in the House, those trying to take down President Trump have a long way to go before they have enough votes to impeach — and even after Mueller’s testimony, most (including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) haven’t changed their opinions on the matter.
Even so, Nadler said on Friday that his Judiciary Committee is pursuing a de facto impeachment inquiry even before any official vote to do so, the Daily Beast reported.
“The committee is exercising its authority to investigate all of these scandals and to decide what to do about them, which could include articles of impeachment,” Nadler said at a press conference. “Whether you call that an inquiry, or whatever you want to call that, that’s what we’ve been doing, and are doing, and will continue to do.”
Whether the Democrats are successful in their efforts remain to be seen. But it looks like they’re going to try to get Trump out of office one way or another — and they might just be saving their push for impeachment until closer to the election when they think it will do the most political damage.