White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Monday accused the news media of seeking “moral equivalence” on the blackface controversy surrounding Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D).
Conway made the comments to a reporter who asked why Trump has weighed in on Northam and not Republican Rep. Steve King’s (Iowa) comments about white supremacy.
“You always want moral equivalence. You always want moral equivalence on everything,” Conway told the reporter outside the West Wing of the White House.
{mosads}She questioned the judgment of anyone who is “not disturbed by what you see” from Northam, who has refused to step down despite pressure from top Democrats after a photo of a person dressed in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe was discovered on a page bearing his name in his medical school yearbook.
The Virginia governor apologized for the photo but later said he was not one of the people in the image.
“Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, ‘I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.’ This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on ‘super’ late term abortion. Unforgivable!” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
One month ago, King came under fire for telling The New York Times: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
The Iowa congressman, who has a history of making racially charged comments, was later stripped of his committee assignments by House Republican leaders.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the remarks “abhorrent” but when asked about them on Jan. 14, Trump said, “I haven’t been following it.”