The White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has announced she will be leaving Donald Trump’s administration at the end of August, citing the need to focus on her family.
Conway, Trump’s campaign manager during the 2016 presidential race, was the first woman to successfully steer a White House bid, then became a senior counsellor to the US president. She informed Trump of her decision in the Oval Office on Sunday.
“I will be transitioning from the White House at the end of this month,” she said in a statement posted on social media.
“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,” she said.
“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.
“This is completely my choice and my voice. In time, I will announce future plans. For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama.”
Conway described her time in the administration and previously with the 2016 campaign as “heady” and “humbling”.
She worked for years as a Republican pollster and operative and originally supported Senator Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primary.
She moved over to the Trump campaign and that August became campaign manager as Steve Bannon became campaign chairman; Bannon was indicted last week for fraud.
Conway would regularly defend the administration in media appearances and used the expression “alternative facts” to defend a contentious view of Trump’s inauguration.
More recently, she was instrumental in getting Trump to restart regular, though shorter, White House briefings about the coronavirus outbreak, a practice that officials have viewed as successful in helping to stop a drop in opinion polls the president has suffered largely because of his handling of the pandemic.
Her husband, George Conway, has also announced he is stepping down from his role at the Lincoln Project, which is working to defeat Trump in November.
George Conway has been a vocal critic of the US president. In a public feud last year, Trump called him a “wack job” and a “husband from hell”, prompting George Conway to say Trump was mentally unfit for his office.
So I’m withdrawing from @ProjectLincoln to devote more time to family matters. And I’ll be taking a Twitter hiatus.
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 24, 2020
Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission. Passionately.
The decisions by the Conways come a day after their 15-year-old daughter, Claudia, said on Twitter that she was seeking “emancipation”. Claudia has previously been outspoken on social media against her parents’ views.
On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway described her time in the administration, and previously with the 2016 campaign, as “heady” and “humbling”.
She had survived several rounds of staff turnovers in an often chaotic and drama-ridden White House.