The husband of Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway had long used only one word to describe himself in his Twitter profile: "Lawyer." But George Conway has now added "Windmill cancer survivor" to the description in a clear attempt to mock one of the more egregiously false claims made by President Donald Trump in recent weeks.
Conway retweeted two posts on April 2 to call out the comment Trump made at a National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser that "if you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer."
#WindmillsCauseCancer began trending on Twitter and a few days later, Conway reshared Trump's comment in a series of tweets to highlight its absurdity.
It is not clear when exactly Conway added "Windmill cancer survivor" to his Twitter profile, but the nonprofit Internet Archive Wayback Machine's last capture of his page, on April 1, shows only the word "Lawyer."
Newsweek reached out to Conway on Wednesday to ask when he changed his Twitter profile. Although he did not immediately respond, he has not let the matter rest.
On Sunday, he tweeted that he was a loyal subscriber of The Washington Post and that he would pay extra to see "Democracy Dies in Redactions" on the masthead the day that special counsel Robert Mueller's report is released.
When a Twitter user reacted by asking "Why do you pay to get lied to? I read that garbage just to stay abreast of what all the mainstream propaganda rags are pushing but would never willingly give any of them a dime," Conway retorted: "You're right. Windmills cause cancer."
Trump has long attacked wind turbines, which are wind energy converters, as an energy source. The Australian parliament formed a Select Committee on Wind Turbines to examine reports of illness and discomfort arising from them. The complaints included "tinnitus, raised blood pressure, heart palpitations, tachycardia, stress, anxiety, vertigo, dizziness" but not cancer. The committee concluded in 2015 that more evidence was required to conclusively link them to any ailment.
White House officials provided no evidence for Trump's claim that windmills cause cancer, and no study has found that they do.
Conway has criticized the president almost daily on Twitter, even though his wife is one of the longest-serving and most high-ranking officials in the Trump administration. The president, too, has used the social media platform to attack Conway.
"George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife's success & angry that I, with her help, didn't give him the job he so desperately wanted," Trump tweeted late last month. "I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!"
About the writer
A Los Angeles native, Jessica Kwong grew up speaking Spanish, Cantonese and English, in that order. Her journalism career started at the San Francisco Chronicle and she has also been a staff writer at the San Antonio Express-News, La Opinión, Time Warner Cable Sports, San Francisco Examiner, and the Orange County Register. Kwong earned her bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature in Spanish and English and Mass Communications from the University of California, Berkeley.
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