'He fears being revealed as a fake or deranged': George Conway fires back after getting under Trump's skin

Conservative lawyer George Conway fired back at Donald Trump this week in a blistering op-ed for the Washington Post explaining why the president has been so furious lately.

Conway is a part of The Lincoln Project, a group of Never Trump conservatives who have released scathing ads targeting the president. Its most recent video slams Trump for his disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic and asserts that Trump has created a climate of “mourning in America” — that is, mourning all of the Americans who have died during the coronavirus pandemic.

The ad, Conway explains, is “an inversion of President Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 reelection campaign ad, ‘Morning in America.’ Reagan’s ad took credit for the resurgence of the American economy. Our ad puts the blame for the government’s failures in responding to COVID-19 right where it belongs: on Trump. He dithered for ten weeks, from January to mid-March, misleading the public about the severity of the crisis, pretending that the virus would never take hold here. History will record that each day of delay cost American lives.”

Trump responded to the Lincoln Project’s “Mourning in America” ad with what Conway describes as a “four-tweet screed,” insulting the anti-Trump conservatives as “losers” on Twitter. And Trump even went so far as to imply that Conway was trying to hurt his wife: GOP strategist Kellyanne Conway, one of the president’s staunchest defenders in the White House.

“I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface,” Trump tweeted, “but it must have been really bad.”

Trump, George Conway stresses in his op-ed, has seriously misplaced priorities if he can find so put so much effort into attacking political rivals at the time when tens of thousands of Americans have died from coronavirus and the death toll continues to soar.

“It may strike you as deranged that a sitting president facing a pandemic has busied himself attacking journalists, political opponents, television news hosts and late-night comedians — even deriding a former president who merely called for empathy and unity in response to the virus,” Conway writes. “It may strike you as nuts that Trump bragged about his supposed Facebook ranking in the middle of a virus task-force briefing, asserted that millions would have died were it not for him, boasted that the ‘Ratings of my News Conferences etc.’ were driving ‘the Lamestream Media…. CRAZY,’ and floated bogus miracle cures, including suggesting that scientists consider injecting humans with household disinfectants such as Clorox. If so, you’re not alone.”

Conway explains that Trump “reacts with such rage” to non-loyalists because “he fears the truth.”

“Trump’s lying, his self-regard, his self-soothing, his lack of empathy, his narcissistic rage, his contempt for norms, rules, laws, facts and simple truths — have all come home to roost,” Conway asserts. “Now, he sees his poll numbers fall accordingly, and lashes out with ever-increasing anger. For deep in his psyche, he knows the truth. Because he fears being revealed as a fake or deranged, he’ll call others fake or deranged. Because he fears losing, he’ll call them losers instead. And while Trump’s mind roils in rage, too many Americans are losing their lives. That’s the losing that matters — to everyone but him.”