George Conway backs would-be judicial appointees lying about supporting Trump in order to gain power and thwart him

Notorious never-Trumper George Conway joined his podcast co-host Sarah Longwell to discuss what they believed is the righteous attempt by the Federalist Society and GOP financier Leonard Leo to install federal judges. Conway bragged about how judges he supported were recommended to the first Trump administration via Leo and that to get their appointments they had to pretend to back Trump.

Conway supported then and continues to support the idea that would-be judicial appointments should essentially lie about supporting Trump initiatives just to get into the position where they would be able to block those initiatives.

President Donald Trump has recently split with both Leo and The Federalist Society over the selection of judges who have thwarted Trump's aims on tariffs and other matters.

Trump in May blasted the judges on the US Court of International Trade who overturned his "liberation day tariffs." These judges were appointed by Trump during his first term and to aid him in his selection he had tapped The Federalist Society. "I did so," Trump wrote, "openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions."

"I'm going to defend these judges," Conway said. "I’m going to defend the choices of these judges generally. You may disagree with—our liberal friends may disagree with the principles that they were trying to appoint judges by—but this was an honest attempt to put good judges on the bench. And in order to do that, they had to make nice to Trump."

"That’s where the corruption, the trade-off, the sellout was. Which I didn't—this is one of the reasons why, you know, we ended up meeting in 2018... I didn’t have a problem with the judges that Leonard was feeding to McGahn, and McGahn was putting on the bench," Conway went on.

"I had a problem with it like, God bless him— you know, we’ve got the scumbag president; might as well get good judges. I have no problem with it," Conway said.

"But the fact that, at the same time, in order to do that, people were, you know, pretending that Trump wasn’t a corrupt son of a bitch and attacking the rule of law, and attacking his own Attorney General, and obstructing justice in the Mueller investigation. To pretend that he wasn’t doing that—it’s like there should be lawyers countering that," Conway went on.

"He openly brags about how he controls Judges," Trump went on, "and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court—I hope that is not so..." He said further that he was "so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave [him] on numerous Judicial Nominations. This is something that cannot be forgotten." While he was happy with some of his judicial picks, he noted that he is "disappointed in others."