Kellyanne Conway steps down as Trump advisor after teenage daughter Claudia says job 'ruined my life'

Michael Howie24 August 2020

One of President Trump’s top aides today announced she is quitting to focus on her family.

In a statement Kellyanne Conway said she was stepping down as his senior adviser at the end of the month to concentrate on her children — promising them “less drama, more mama”.

Her work as a passionate public defender of Donald Trump has set the mother-of-four against members of her family, including her lawyer husband and eldest daughter.

Only hours before the shock announcement 15-year-old Claudia took to social media to declare that she was “officially pushing for emancipation” from her parents.

“Buckle up because this is probably going to be public one way or another, unfortunately. Welcome to my life,” she wrote on Twitter. In another post she claimed that her mother’s job had “ruined my life”.

Ms Conway’s departure comes amid the presidential election campaign. Claudia has previously described herself as a “radical agnostic liberal/leftist” and is a keen supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Last month she announced her parents were “making me delete all social media”, but soon returned to Twitter where she attacked Mr Trump as “racist” and “homophobic”.

In the statement, Mrs Conway, 53, touched on troubles at home as she revealed she was leaving her high-profile role. “This is completely my choice and my voice,” she said.

Mrs Conway also spoke about her relationship with her husband George, a conservative lawyer and well-known critic of the President.

“We disagree about plenty but we are united on what matters most: the kids.”

Claudia Conway with her mother Kellyanne Conway

She added: “Our four children are teens and tweens starting a new academic year, in middle school and high school, remotely from home for at least a few months. As millions of parents nationwide know, kids ‘doing school from home’ requires a level of attention and vigilance that is as unusual as these times.”

Mr Conway is a Washington lawyer who is key figure in the Lincoln Project, a pressure group which aims to “defeat Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box”.

In a public feud last year, Mr Trump called him a “wack job” and a “husband from hell”, prompting Mr Conway to say Trump was mentally unfit for his office. Mr Conway last night said he was stepping back from his role in the Lincoln Project in a separate statement on Twitter. Mrs Conway’s departure will leave Mr Trump without one of his more passionate spokesmen.

She was his third campaign manager in 2016 and has been one of Trump’s most loyal and outspoken defenders in public and on cable news. She was the first woman to successfully manage a presidential campaign to victory.

US President Donald Trump sits alongside Kellyanne Conway
AFP via Getty Images

Mrs Conway has also been involved in a number of controversies. In a 2017 interview, she cited a non-existent “massacre” to defend the administration’s immigration restrictions. In the same year a US government ethics advisory board said she should be investigated after urging people to buy clothes developed by the President’s daughter Ivanka.

The announcement comes as a blow to Mr Trump as he seeks to boost his faltering re-election campaign at this week’s Republican National Convention amid the pandemic, economic woes and polls showing him lagging behind his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

In an interview with Fox News, Mr Trump said the four-day event, which is largely being staged online after the physical convention was cancelled due to the pandemic, would be “very uplifting and positive”.

Mr Trump also sought to strike a positive note in the battle against the virus by announcing that emergency authorisation has been given to treat patients with plasma.

The technique uses antibody-rich blood plasma from people who have recovered from the disease. It has already been used on more than 70,000 people in the US.

Mr Trump called the move a “breakthrough” and claimed it could cut deaths by 35 per cent. However some experts claim that more research is required to determine it effectiveness.