Conway: Reporters covering Trump 'ought to think about what they're really doing'

close

Video

Kellyanne Conway calls on the media to give Trump a chance

On 'Hannity,' the counselor to the president says the White House and the media need to figure out how to 'co-parent'

Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway told Fox News Monday that reporters covering the West Wing who mock President Donald Trump "ought to think about what they're really doing."

"If they snark, if they roll their eyes, if their Twitter feed is filled with 92 percent anti-Trump tweets, they're not being reporters, they're being opinion columnists," Conway told Fox News' Sean Hannity in a White House interivew. "They're being professional political hacks and pundits, and we have a right to call that out."

Conway said an erroneous pool report that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office after Trump's inauguration Friday was an example of "presumptive negativity" toward the new administration from the mainstream media.

"[The pool reporter] puts it out, it gets tweeted and it gets reported 3,000 times -- you still can't take it back," Conway said. "He apologized to his colleagues in the press. He has not apologized to the President and the damage is done because then people look at Donald Trump as [racist].

"The darn bust was right there. I was next to it. It was being hidden by a guard," Conway added. "But why didn't you ask us? Why didn't you say 'where's the bust?'"

Conway also said that Trump's first priority as president is boosting the economy, a process that includes the repeal and replacement of ObamaCare.

"It’s been detrimental to millions of Americans who already lost their insurance, lost their doctors, lost their plans," Conway said. "They were promised otherwise and they’re in a much less favorable position now because of ObamaCare."

Another component of Trump's economic plan is the reduction of corporate taxes, which Conway said would be done "dramatically."

"What's important about reducing the burdens on employers is that those are individuals who are deciding whether they can attract and retain a workforce here in America, or if they're going to have to go elsewhere," Conway said. "Those are the people deciding whether they can afford to pay their workers benefits, like pensions, retirement funds and certainly health care and other benefits."