Attorney and vocal Trump critic George Conway on Tuesday hypothesized that Trump’s “influence will wane” as the president prepares to leave the White House this week.
In an op-ed published in The Washington Post the day before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, Conway, husband of former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, characterized Trump as “an enemy of the truth.”
“I believe he’s a con man, a pathological liar,” Conway wrote. “I believe he doesn’t care about, and may not even fully comprehend, the difference between truth and lies, between honesty and mendacity.”
He continued, “I believe he has always said what he wants to believe, what he wants others to believe, and what he thinks he can get away with, and always will.”
Conway, who helped found anti-Trump GOP group The Lincoln Project, added that Trump’s “lies weren’t necessarily the most damaging ones to our country.”
Conway has since stepped away from his role at The Lincoln Project, citing the need to concentrate on his family.
“Equally harmful, if not more so, were the lies that allowed him to flourish — not just others’ repetition of his lies, but also lies that many told themselves and others to justify not contradicting him — that you can’t take him literally, that you need to look at what he does or that his policies justified it all,” Conway explained.
“At one time, I believed, because I wanted to believe, that Trump could be a good president, or at least a passable one,” Conway added, before writing, “I believe I was wrong.”
The attorney then wrote that Trump’s months-long refusal to publicly acknowledge his electoral defeat and his unsupported claims of widespread voter fraud were not just “deceitful attacks on the election results,” but also attacks “on the Constitution he swore to uphold.”
Critics of the president argue that Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was tainted by widespread voter fraud provided the impetus for the violent mob that attacked the Capitol earlier this month. Before the Jan. 6 attack, Trump told his supporters during a speech at the White House Ellipse that he would never concede, and he encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol building.
“As for the insurrection he incited, I believe it never should have come to that, but thanks to Trump (and his enablers), it was always going to come to that,” Conway added, referring to the violent Jan. 6 pro-Trump riot at the Capitol in which five people died amid the chaos.
The House last week voted to impeach Trump, charging him with inciting the attack with his efforts to challenge the election results.
The proceedings will now move to the Senate for an impeachment trial.
While outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he hasn’t decided how he would vote on impeachment, the GOP leader on Tuesday told his colleagues that he believes Trump “provoked” the actions of the mob.
Despite the division across the U.S., Conway on Tuesday wrote that he thinks “there is hope for the country, because I believe truth wins out in the end.”
“I believe many who supported Trump are beginning to see their mistakes, and that his influence will wane as he fades into history as a pariah,” Conway added.