Who needs to watch Keeping up with the Kardashians when TikTok has Covid with the Conways?
Former White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway and her teenaged daughter, Claudia, are offering up some reality TV-style drama on social media, after mom cracked down on her daughter’s TikTok videos about Donald Trump and COVID-19.
Kellyanne remains a loyal ally of U.S. President Trump, but her 15-year-old daughter Claudia has accrued more than 1.2 million followers on TikTok by criticizing her mom and her mom’s boss in a series of brutally candid videos. Both of them recently tested positive for COVID-19, prompting Claudia to blame Kellyanne for bringing the virus home from a Trump event.
Their differences boiled over onto the internet Monday, when Claudia recorded a video of Kellyanne swearing at her, then deleted it and posted a “correction” at the urging of her mother.
“My mother claims that she did not lie to me,” Claudia wrote in the caption on a video Monday. “She had three tests done. First negative, second two positive. We were not in communication. I misinterpreted it.”
Kellyanne can be heard badgering Claudia about the correction in the video.
Claudia also claimed in videos and comments that Trump was not handling his own COVID-19 battle as well as he claimed.
“Apparently he is doing badly lol they are doing what they can to stabilize him,” she wrote in a comment over the weekend, while Trump was at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
“Guys lmao he’s not doing ‘better,'” she later added, after Trump posted claims that he was feeling well on social media.
Claudia Conway’s recent videos have been downloaded and shared widely on Twitter, where many of them have accumulated hundreds of thousands of views. Critics of the Trump administration have celebrated her posts, with one user applauding her as the liberal version of “Q,” the mystery figure behind the far-right QAnon hoax.
Kellyanne threw cold water on her daughter’s claims early Tuesday, and scolded Twitter users for amplifying her message.
“My daughter, Claudia, is beautiful & brilliant. She has access to top doctors & health care & lives comfortably,” Kellyanne Conway tweeted.
“Like all of you, she speculates on social media. Yet she’s 15. You are adults. We have COVID, but it’s clear who’s really sick.”
The Conway family has become a tiny battleground state of its own in the Trump era.
Kellyanne was Trump’s campaign manager and later served as his counsellor at the White House. Perhaps her most well-known moment occurred in 2017, when she infamously coined the term “alternative facts” to defend the president’s false claims about his inauguration crowd size.
Her official time at the White House ended last month but she continues to serve as a Trump surrogate on television.
Her husband, George Conway, emerged as a leading GOP “never Trumper” during the president’s first term. He has frequently criticized the president in public, and he helped launch the Republican-run Lincoln Project earlier this year. The Lincoln Project has established a strong “never Trump” presence on Twitter, where it targets the president through a variety of snarky videos and personal attacks.
Claudia emerged as a political activist of her own this year through her unfiltered TikTok videos, which have often served to undermine her mother and the president’s administration. She has also occasionally posted about her own mental health amid the political battles in her household.
George and Kellyanne Conway announced plans to step away from their respective roles in August. George said he made the decision in order to “devote more time to family matters.”
Claudia bragged about her parents’ job changes in a series of TikTok videos.
“This is becoming way too much so I am taking a mental health break from social media,” the teen wrote on Twitter on Aug. 23. “See y’all soon. Thank you for the love and support. No hate to my parents please.”
She has not tweeted since sharing that message, but she remains active on TikTok.
Some of her latest videos describe her COVID-19 symptoms.
“My mom has no symptoms yet I literally feel like HELL,” she wrote in a comment on a video Sunday.
“Just saw your mom on the news without a mask on,” one person wrote to her.
“And you wonder why I have covid,” she replied.
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