Kellyanne Conway tells Fox & Friends that linking Trump and the Christchurch shooter is 'outrageous'

While her husband was on Twitter suggesting that President Trump might have a personality disorder, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday to defend her boss.

Conway was specifically challenging the notion that Trump should be considered an influence on Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old Australian white supremacist, who killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday. Before he carried out the attack, Tarrant wrote a sprawling 70-page manifesto in which he identified Trump as a champion of white nationalism, though he did criticize his policy decisions. Conway said on the show, however, that any comparisons between Trump and Tarrant are "predictable and outrageous." She added that reading the entire manifesto would dispel the notion that Trump served as motivation and that all blame should be reserved for the shooter alone.

Conway argued that when a shooter, who was revealed to be a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), opened fire on a Republican congressional softball team practice in Arlington, Virginia in 2017, she and her colleagues did not blame MSNBC or Sanders.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Mediaite, though, reports that Conway did, in fact, appear on Fox & Friends following that shooting and suggested that if the media was not so openly opposed to Trump, such attacks would not have occurred. Tim O'Donnell