WASHINGTON — The president of New Jersey native Kellyanne Conway’s alma mater has taken aim at the counselor to President Donald Trump.
“Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway, Trinity Class of 1989, has played a large role in facilitating the manipulation of facts and encouraging the grave injustice being perpetrated by the Trump administration’s war on immigrants among many other issues,” Trinity Washington University President Patricia McGuire wrote on the university president’s blog.
“Ms. Conway has been part of a team that thinks nothing of shaping and spreading a skein of lies as a means to secure power,” she said.
Conway, who who grew up in the Atco section of Waterford, attended Trinity, a Catholic university in the nation’s capital. Other alums include House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
“It’s a disappointment to have the president of the university lift up other Trinity graduates who have a casual relationship with the truth,” Conway, the first woman to manage a successful presidential campaign, told the Washington Post.
Ethics office recommends Conway probe
Referring to Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Conway told the newspaper, “I get better treatment from Robby Mook than I do from the president of the university I attended.”
She told the Post that she and her husband donated $50,000 to a 1999-2002 fundraising campaign by the university.
After White House spokesman Sean Spicer erroneously claimed that Trump’s inauguration crowds were bigger than his predecessor’s, Conway defended his position by saying he was using “alternative facts.”
She also claimed that the media never reported on the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre, but later said she misspoke and instead was referring to the 2011 arrest and subsequent conviction of two Iraqi refugees in Bowling Green, Ky., for supporting terrorists.
“The Honor Code says we must not look away from lies, that we must confront them and tell the truth as a matter of justice for the community,” McGuire wrote. “The truth of the present moment in our country is that the authoritarian impulse will prevail unless people of courage and integrity confront the outright lies and shady manipulation of facts.
In her blog post, McGuire specifically mentioned Trump’s executive order on immigration, which banned visitors from seven Muslim countries whose citizens had nothing to do with 9/11 and has been blocked by the federal courts; and his campaign promise to deport all 11 million unauthorized immigrants.
“The gravest lie we are grappling with at the present moment is the Trump Administration’s cruel and unreasonable war on immigrants,” McGuire said. ” President Trump claims this is all about stopping terrorism, but in fact, the evidence is clear that the people being banned and deported are not terrorists and the claim that there is widespread crime and unlawful behavior in immigrant communities is just not true.”
She said some students protected from deportation by President Barack Obama’s executive order that Trump promised to revoke were “hassled, frisked and interrogated at airports for domestic travel during the Christmas holidays, and others are now fearful of traveling within the U.S.” to visit their families or for summer jobs.
“The climate for all immigrants has become treacherous,” McGuire said.
Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook
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