Kellyanne Conway doesn't care about angry constituents, just her own "Real Person Impact" meter

The White House counsel responded bizarrely when asked about angry constituents

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published February 7, 2017 9:46PM (EST)

 (NBC)
(NBC)

President Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway reportedly had a bizarrely dismissive response to the agitated phone calls that have barraged the White House over its cabinet nominations.

When asked about the fact that thousands of people have called the White House to criticize Trump's cabinet picks, Conway reportedly said that she was more worried about her own "RPI" or "Real Person Impact" meter, according to multiple sources who talked to Politico.

"She basically said the people jamming up the phones don't matter to this White House," a communications director for a Republican senator told Politico. "That this administration just cares about what matters to 'real people.'"

There are a multiple ways to construe Conway's alleged comment. One is that she, like the rest of the Trump administration, is trying to spin the president's abysmal approval ratings. The Gallup tracking poll has placed his approval rating at between 42 and 44 percent since late January; by contrast, his disapproval rating has been between 50 and 54 percent during that same period of time. This is a historic low for an incoming president since Gallup began tracking these statistics, and when combined with the fact that Trump lost the popular vote and had a lower inaugural crowd turnout than Barack Obama's first inauguration, it stands to reason that approval may be a sore spot for the new administration.

The other interpretation, of course, is that the Trump administration is dismissing the many demographics of Americans which didn't vote for him. This is the first presidential cabinet in three decades without a single Hispanic nominee, whose only black appointment is arguably a white supremacist and which recently passed an immigration ban that specifically targets Muslims. Trump's 2016 victory was due overwhelmingly to the support of white and Christian Americans, which may have been the group Conway was referring to in her reported remark.


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Cabinet Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway Religion