White House counselor Kellyanne Conway sparked criticism this week after claiming Martin Luther King Jr. would not support impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump.
In a Monday interview with NBC News, Conway said Trump “agrees with many of the things Dr. Martin Luther King stood for,” including “unity and equality.” She added that the president isn’t the one “tearing the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that really is very shameful at this point.”
said the late Martin Luther King Jr. and President Trump agreed on “unity and equality.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The pundit’s remarks came in response to a question about how Trump was celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday. He and Vice President Mike Pence stopped by the MLK memorial in Washington, D.C., on Monday before heading to the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland.
Invoking the teachings of Dr. King, Conway said the civil rights leader had a different hope for Americans than what’s happening to Trump, 73. The U. S. House voted to impeach the president last month, accusing him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Trump’s Senate trial is scheduled to begin Monday.
“I’ve held my opinion on it for a long time, but when you see the articles of impeachment [that] came out, I don’t think it was Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged with bribery, extortion, high crimes or misdemeanors,” Conway added.
The senior Trump aide further argued that anyone who cares for the phrase “and justice for all” should appreciate the fact that the president has a “full-throttle defense” against the claims being lobbed against him.
Conway’s comments were met with a flurry of criticism, with folks blasting her for invoking Dr. King in a paltry attempt to defend the president.
“This is so ignorant that it cannot be anything but deliberately cruel. It’s like blackface on Halloween,” Rolling Stone writer Jamil Smith tweeted. ‘You can count on this kind of rubbish every single Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This isn’t merely gross co-option. It angers people, and she knows it.”
Gun safety advocate Fred Guttenburg excoriated the “queen of alternative facts” for using “truly historic figures to support the lawless crook that you work for.”
“I’m sick and tired of racist white folks like @KellyannePolls lying & declaring they share the same values as MLK,” Bishop Talbert Swan chimed in, adding: “Y’all know %#* well Trump, his RACIST policies, behavior, ideology, and politics are completely antithetical to everything King stood for.”
Progressive politician Bobby Bliatout also criticized Conway’s “attention-seeking behavior … on a day that we should strive for unity, peace, and equality.”
As if her head-scratching remarks weren’t enough, Conway went on to link herself to Martin Luther King Jr., telling NBC News she was “happy to share a birthday with this [holiday].”
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