Katie Miller Podcast - Episode 10 - Kellyanne Conway | The Katie Miller Podcast
Aired: 2025-10-13
Duration: 01:24:57


=== Turning Fifty on Inauguration Day (02:13) ===

[00:00:00]  To be honest, I don't remember every detail except that I can tell you the shock was real.
[00:00:04]  I have very thick shock absorbers, as you can imagine, as I know you do.
[00:00:07]  The shock was real.
[00:00:08]  The pain was very deep.
[00:00:10]  It just was not expected.
[00:00:12]  Did you ever think about stepping out from your job during that time period and just having it all go away?
[00:00:17]  I did.
[00:00:17]  I don't think it would have gone away.
[00:00:19]  I worried about safety.
[00:00:20]  Very much worried about safety.
[00:00:21]  I felt like I was safe where I was.
[00:00:23]  People think that somehow President Trump and George were in this bat.
[00:00:26]  President Trump rarely mentioned him.
[00:00:28]  He mentioned him a couple times in answers to a very specific question, but never said his name.
[00:00:32]  He said, oh, you mean Mr. Kellyanne Conway?
[00:00:33]  I don't know.
[00:00:34]  You have to ask her.
[00:00:34]  I don't know him well.
[00:00:36]  And she's wonderful.
[00:00:38]  I don't know why he would do that.
[00:00:39]  Look, Trump derangement syndrome is real.
[00:00:41]  There is no vaccine, therapeutic, or cure.
[00:00:43]  It addles the brain.
[00:00:45]  It shuts down your sense of humor.
[00:00:46]  Is there anything less attractive than, I don't know, an underachieving middle-aged man who never really made it?
[00:00:52]  No, the idea that anyone, let alone professionals in the media, could direct message your 15-year-old daughter and think it's okay is absurd.
[00:01:01]  Claudia is my daughter and whatever I have discussed with Claudia and whatever we have done together and said together as a family or as a mother and a daughter, that's going to stay between us.
[00:01:21]  Hi, everyone, and welcome to today's episode of the Katie Miller podcast.
[00:01:25]  I'm so excited to be joined here today by a dear friend, Kellyanne Conway.
[00:01:30]  Thank you so much for doing this.
[00:01:32]  Thank you.
[00:01:32]  Hello to the audience.
[00:01:34]  So you are a household name.
[00:01:35]  I would say most people in the country know who Kellyanne Conway is.
[00:01:39]  But could you tell us a bit about your career prior to the 2016 campaign?
[00:01:42]  Yes.
[00:01:43]  Well, Katie Miller, first of all, congratulations on your new podcast.
[00:01:46]  That is not an easy feat.
[00:01:48]  I know folks are begging to be guests and tuning in regularly just to see who you're interviewing and what tough questions you're asking that week.
[00:01:55]  So I'm so happy to be here.
[00:01:58]  So I turned 50 on Donald Trump's inauguration day.
[00:02:01]  I literally was born January 20th, 1967.
[00:02:05]  And so when he asked me to be campaign manager earlier that summer, one of the last things I said to him was, you know, Mr. Trump, I believe in the hand of God.

=== The Polling Company Origins (10:09) ===

[00:02:13]  I believe in fate.
[00:02:14]  And I turned 50 on Inauguration Day.
[00:02:16]  We'll either have the birthday party of a lifetime or I'll take the kids to Italy.
[00:02:20]  And he's very polite about it.
[00:02:21]  I don't know that I was really that forthcoming or clear in what I was saying.
[00:02:26]  He's a busy guy.
[00:02:26]  He was very polite about it, but my kids didn't get to Italy until 2022.
[00:02:30]  I'm glad to report.
[00:02:31]  And so I had an entire career before that.
[00:02:35]  I was a lawyer by 25, admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
[00:02:41]  I clerked for a judge here in Washington, D.C. for a year.
[00:02:44]  I learned an awful lot there.
[00:02:46]  But prior to that, during college, I had worked for a guy named Dick Worthland.
[00:02:50]  He was Ronald Reagan's pollster.
[00:02:51]  Frank Lunz helped me get a job there for $8 an hour in the summer of 1988.
[00:02:56]  And I feel like I learned at the knees of the master, as the saying goes, where you learn about survey research, how to construct questions, the science and the art of polling.
[00:03:06]  And I learned that over the course of 14 or 15 months at the Worthland Group.
[00:03:10]  Then I left and went to law school.
[00:03:12]  So I'm a fully recovered attorney.
[00:03:14]  I practiced very briefly.
[00:03:16]  And I love having a law degree, particularly in Washington, D.C.
[00:03:19]  I think, unlike other cities, I learned early on, Katie, unlike other cities, at the time anyway, in the 90s, I felt D.C. really revered bald heads and grayheads.
[00:03:28]  There's a certain seniority and pecking order and protocol and a hierarchy.
[00:03:33]  You see that on Capitol Hill, that folks who have the senior positions, by and large, have been there the longest.
[00:03:39]  And so I felt having that objective credential, a law degree at 25, was distinctive.
[00:03:46]  And I also felt it was a way for me to always support myself.
[00:03:49]  And that has been true.
[00:03:51]  So when I went to law school, I got out of law school.
[00:03:54]  I had accepted an offer at a local law firm as a first year associate after my clerkship.
[00:03:58]  And instead I went right back into polling and I worked for Frank Luntz all through the 1994 contract with America, the New Gingridge Republican Revolution, and that was amazing.
[00:04:07]  Then I went out on my own.
[00:04:08]  I felt the conservative movement needed its own pollster.
[00:04:10]  June 1st, 1995.
[00:04:12]  It was called the Polling Company.
[00:04:13]  I had it for 22 years until I sold it to stay in the White House.
[00:04:17]  So I've been a poll.
[00:04:18]  I was plying my trade.
[00:04:20]  I was on television shows.
[00:04:21]  CNN hired me as Gen X conservative political analyst.
[00:04:25]  They would never call that that again.
[00:04:27]  would never have true conservatives on again except for a few.
[00:04:31]  And I found this new calling on television, but I never wanted to do that full-time.
[00:04:36]  I felt that my skill set was really in polling and consulting and I loved that.
[00:04:40]  So I had given advice to other presidential campaigns, to down ballot candidates.
[00:04:46]  A lot of our work was, you'll appreciate this, a lot of my work was forced by what I call the New Boys Network.
[00:04:52]  They always say, was the old boys network, was the old boys club bad to you?
[00:04:54]  I'm like, no, the old boys club loved me.
[00:04:56]  I reminded them of their daughter, their nieces, their secretaries, whatever, their housekeepers.
[00:05:01]  They loved me.
[00:05:02]  It was a new boys network, maybe my age and a little younger, that maybe had a problem with a woman ascending through the ranks here and there.
[00:05:10]  So I thanked them in my memoir, Here's the Deal, a couple years ago.
[00:05:13]  I said I also thanking my parents and my family and said, I'd also like to thank all the people who tried to keep me down and excluded me from a seat at the boys' table because it forced me.
[00:05:25]  They wouldn't give me contracts at the RNC, the NRCC, or the presidential campaigns.
[00:05:29]  And by the way, those presidential campaigns kept failing.
[00:05:32]  So try something new.
[00:05:34]  And I say, thank you so much for excluding me because it forced me to go and ply my trade and make my living in market research, Katie, but in an entirely different way.
[00:05:45]  So we had Major League Baseball as a client.
[00:05:47]  We had American Express as a client.
[00:05:48]  We had Martha Stewart living on the media.
[00:05:50]  Her media company's a client.
[00:05:52]  And it forced me to figure out not what likely voters are thinking, but what the whole country is doing when no one's looking, how they're spending their time and their money.
[00:06:00]  So we became mini experts on women consumers.
[00:06:05]  And we had clients like Lifetime Television asking us, how do we get more women to watch Lifetime or why are they watching, et cetera.
[00:06:13]  And we were able to translate that to politics eventually.
[00:06:15]  I think it took an outsider to the political system, Donald J. Trump, to hire more outsiders who had never really been accepted or assimilated into the establishment so much, whether people were jealous or overzealous or just, well, the petty, peevish folks they still are.
[00:06:34]  God bless them.
[00:06:35]  I pray for them all.
[00:06:36]  Whatever it was.
[00:06:37]  They're now all the anti-Trumpers because thank you.
[00:06:40]  They're all the never-Trumpers.
[00:06:41]  And is there anything less attractive than, I don't know, an underachieving middle-aged man who never really made it?
[00:06:49]  No.
[00:06:49]  So in any event, I always had a smile on my face.
[00:06:55]  I always tried harder.
[00:06:56]  They'd give me focus groups.
[00:06:57]  Were you very political?
[00:06:59]  I grew up in a very non-political household.
[00:07:02]  I grew up in a house with my mom, her mom, and two of my mom's unmarried sisters.
[00:07:06]  So these four Italian Catholic women raised me, only child in the house.
[00:07:11]  And the dog outside was a boy.
[00:07:13]  The dog inside was a girl.
[00:07:14]  Like, I should have been a feminist and a Democrat and a liberal and a man-hater.
[00:07:17]  I should have been helping Hillary Clinton on January 20th, 2017.
[00:07:21]  But instead, we were helping to defeat her.
[00:07:24]  I grew up in a non-political household, Katie, but we talked about everything.
[00:07:28]  They were small business owners, emphasis on small.
[00:07:30]  We knelt for the Lord.
[00:07:31]  We stood for the flag.
[00:07:32]  Military was very important to us.
[00:07:35]  There were some veterans in our family or an extended family, friends as family.
[00:07:40]  We had a great deal of respect.
[00:07:42]  I came of age during President Reagan.
[00:07:44]  I wasn't old enough to vote for him, but he visited my hometown when I was a senior in high school.
[00:07:48]  It was transformative to me.
[00:07:49]  It was just a very brief interaction, but one of those moments in your life where you're saying, I want to listen a little bit more carefully to what he's saying.
[00:07:56]  the summer of 1980, President Reagan as the incumbent, excuse me, 84, President Reagan as the incumbent and Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro, another Italian Catholic woman were running, and I had a covert for the local paper, and that meant watching on the TV, not fly around to the conventions.
[00:08:13]  And I was really excited that this Italian Catholic woman was running for vice president.
[00:08:17]  But I listened to all the speeches, the Democratic side, and kind of unrecognizable the way they are now, even worse now.
[00:08:23]  Then I heard Reagan a week later.
[00:08:26]  And I was just wowed.
[00:08:27]  I said, here's a guy who doesn't share my gender, is literally four times my age or so and from a different coast.
[00:08:33]  But he spoke to me.
[00:08:34]  It was optimistic, patriotic.
[00:08:37]  It was about using military might and our force and our goodness in the world to make positive changes.
[00:08:44]  And he reflected on everything he had done in the first term to build on that in the second term.
[00:08:48]  So I was hooked.
[00:08:49]  I had the bug.
[00:08:50]  And I then interned for Congressman Jack Kemp, volunteered on his presidential campaign, interned for him in his last term in Congress.
[00:08:59]  And then really kept that political bug all along, got that law degree.
[00:09:03]  But I think I'm a very non-unique case.
[00:09:06]  I think it's very typical in this country that people aren't focused on politics.
[00:09:11]  They don't live, breathe, and eat it.
[00:09:13]  And many Americans, Katie, and I sympathize with this for them.
[00:09:16]  They wonder how and when politics seeped into every conversation, collaboration, consideration, friend group.
[00:09:23]  And it can be divisive, but it also seems to be ubiquitous.
[00:09:28]  And I think the ubiquitousness of politics now, that it's not in every two-year or four-year proposition is what rankles people.
[00:09:35]  I think it started in like 2015, the day President Trump announced the government.
[00:09:38]  It absolutely did.
[00:09:39]  And look, he has completely transformed American politics, the Republican Party, but he's really transformed the Republican Party as the party of the worker.
[00:09:49]  And when he says America first, what that means is not America alone, obviously, but I remember in the first term, he told, he said, I would expect Angela Merkel to say Germany first and Emmanuel Macron to say France first.
[00:10:00]  Like that's our job.
[00:10:02]  And I think also President Trump won this last time.
[00:10:05]  And this is why I think you don't have to be political to be involved in politics.
[00:10:09]  I think he won on some common sense, very simple ABC 123 kind of issues.
[00:10:15]  Should we have an open border?
[00:10:17]  Should we be a sovereign nation?
[00:10:18]  We've spent billions of dollars as a nation protecting the borders of other countries.
[00:10:22]  Isn't it high time we protect our own?
[00:10:24]  And people had lived through it then.
[00:10:26]  They lived through it.
[00:10:26]  Every state was a border state, and they said, wow, I see it in my backyard.
[00:10:31]  I feel it in our social services, in the classroom.
[00:10:33]  When you were doing polling, you know, I was there back in the day, for all these different companies you mentioned.
[00:10:40]  Are these some of the issues that you would see would pop over time as you're just polling the country?
[00:10:44]  What we always felt, what we always saw was that people feeling that things weren't fair.
[00:10:49]  So the left likes to talk about equity, equity, equity.
[00:10:52]  Kamala could vomit that word 18 times in a 16-word sentence.
[00:10:56]  And equity is equality of outcomes.
[00:10:59]  Fairness is a quality of opportunity.
[00:11:01]  And I believe President Trump won for many reasons, migration, inflation, but I think the themes were really, it was really strength over weakness, weakness at the border, weakness in our economy, weakness in our president, say Joe Biden, weakness around the globe, we weren't respected anymore, weakness in our military capability, all of that, Katie.
[00:11:22]  But then he also got elected because of fairness, and it's fairness over wokeness and fairness over unfairness.
[00:11:28]  So what we find with people, voters or consumers, is that they say, I just want to go to work, raise my family as I want to, live my life quietly and privately, and pay my dues, pay my taxes, whatever that is, and be left alone.
[00:11:46]  So I think all of those philosophies and policies, we can talk about them through an economic prism, but it's really fairness.
[00:11:53]  And the fairness piece is essential for this reason.
[00:11:56]  When President Trump says, look, you've got 14 million people coming here, folks can look at that and say, well, that's not fair.
[00:12:06]  And then when they get here, you turn on, you open up your phone or you turn on at least one network and you will see folks getting off a bus and getting free clothes with tags on them, brand new clothes with tags on them, free cell phones, digital benefit cards, cash.

=== Fairness for Working Moms (15:05) ===

[00:12:22]  They were getting hotel rooms at the Roosevelt Storied Hotel in Manhattan for weeks.
[00:12:26]  I know they were getting your kids seat in the New York City classroom and folks would say, they'll say, well, that's not fair.
[00:12:32]  It's not fair to trap entire generations of schoolchildren in failing schools.
[00:12:36]  It's just not fair.
[00:12:37]  People say it's not fair to have plumbers and pipe fitters, who I grew up with, to pay for the student loans of doctors and lawyers.
[00:12:43]  I had tons of student loans.
[00:12:44]  They're not responsible for that.
[00:12:45]  I am.
[00:12:46]  So people have this sense of fairness.
[00:12:47]  Men and women sports.
[00:12:49]  You could say outrageous, sure, but most people would say, well, that's just not fair.
[00:12:53]  Who came up with that idea?
[00:12:55]  So I think that's something we always saw with consumers looking for value or saying, I just want things to be the way I thought they were going to be.
[00:13:04]  You promised this, you made an offer, I accepted it, etc.
[00:13:07]  So you've been in D.C. for how many years?
[00:13:09]  I got here in 1985 when I was 18 years old for college and then law school.
[00:13:14]  I stayed in Washington, D.C. for 20 years, including starting my business.
[00:13:18]  And then I left to go to New York, where all four of my children were born.
[00:13:23]  Where did you meet George?
[00:13:24]  I met George.
[00:13:25]  He saw me on the cover of a magazine that was quickly defunct, one of these Washington-style magazines called Capital Style, I believe.
[00:13:35]  And he saw me on the cover of the magazine when he was writing the Metroliner, which was the predecessor to the Acela, many years ago, and asked his friend Ann Coulter if she knew me.
[00:13:45]  We were supposed to meet in January of 1998, and we didn't meet until August of 99.
[00:13:51]  So that was really lucky.
[00:13:53]  And he was in New York, a renowned lawyer who made partner at a very prestigious law firm at the age of 30, graduated Harvard at 20, law school at 23, you know, real overachiever in his academics and in his career.
[00:14:10]  And when we met, I had been in a relationship for many, many years that had broken off a couple years before that.
[00:14:16]  A guy who's fairly well known now and a friend and a client.
[00:14:19]  He's a great person.
[00:14:21]  And anyhow, I really wasn't open to dating.
[00:14:24]  I'd taken up running and I was focused on my business and I had a dog and all of that.
[00:14:31]  But George was, you know, my friend asked me, you know, my friend Betsy said, so do you like this guy, George?
[00:14:38]  He seems to be around a lot because he wants to go to the Yankees World Series and the ALDS and then we're going to the Philadelphia Eagles game.
[00:14:45]  So that's his bipartisan ZyRM.
[00:14:47]  I root for the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Eagles.
[00:14:51]  And I said, oh, do I like him?
[00:14:52]  I said, well, I find that his mere constant present does not annoy the hell out of me.
[00:14:56]  And she said, that's like head over for the rest of us.
[00:14:59]  So anyway, yeah, and then we got married in 2001.
[00:15:04]  Before 9-11, we bought a condo in Trump World Tower on the 80th floor.
[00:15:10]  And then 9-11 hit and many people were pulling their contracts.
[00:15:13]  And our original settlement date was, closing date was right after that, and it got pushed a little bit.
[00:15:19]  But so we built a life there, but I still had my business here and I saw my home here that I bought as a single woman in Virginia.
[00:15:25]  And eventually when we were having children, we picked a city and New York won.
[00:15:29]  So we were there and then in North Jersey for 11 years and then came back because both George and me in that order accepted big jobs with President Trump for his new administration.
[00:15:39]  George had accepted President Trump's nomination to head up the civil division at the Department of Justice, which as we all appreciate is a huge job.
[00:15:47]  And so he had done that and I was dragging my feet about coming in.
[00:15:51]  Frankly, my kids were 7, 8, 12, 12, crappy age, crappy age.
[00:15:54]  When Trump won.
[00:15:55]  They were crappy age when Trump won.
[00:15:57]  And then, and I also.
[00:15:58]  7, 8, 12, 12.
[00:15:59]  Yep, 7, 8, 12, 12.
[00:16:01]  They're about to be, in the next two weeks, 16, 17, 21, 21.
[00:16:06]  And life is great.
[00:16:08]  More on them later, I'm sure.
[00:16:10]  But I will say this.
[00:16:11]  I was also staring at a gold mine of life-changing money because Trump won.
[00:16:16]  People weren't expecting it.
[00:16:17]  Said, we told you so.
[00:16:18]  We were on the TV saying we're going to win Michigan, Wisconsin.
[00:16:20]  Like, roll the tape.
[00:16:21]  Anyway, and people were throwing money at me, and it was a lot of money, the kind I'll probably never see again.
[00:16:27]  And I thought about it.
[00:16:29]  What was the biggest paycheck you turned down?
[00:16:31]  Oh, boy.
[00:16:34]  Eight figures to buy my company at the time, which I don't think it was worth anything near that.
[00:16:41]  And I'm not a lobbyist.
[00:16:42]  They weren't buying that.
[00:16:43]  They weren't really buying access to President Trump because I wouldn't do that.
[00:16:47]  They just were, wow, it's a whole new world and new people are in charge and new thinking has taken hold and they know something about the country that everybody else missed.
[00:16:56]  So that's okay.
[00:16:57]  You know, it doesn't, it doesn't, I've never regretted it a single day because I loved my job in the White House and I love working for President Candidate Trump and then President Trump.
[00:17:08]  Did the campaign take a toll on your family?
[00:17:11]  Or was it more once you entered the White House?
[00:17:14]  What was that shift like?
[00:17:15]  So George had taken a job at DOJ?
[00:17:18]  And then he withdrew his name around May 1st.
[00:17:22]  The dates are important.
[00:17:24]  George accepted a job with President Trump early on, long before I did.
[00:17:28]  And then he took his name out of contention after being nominated and interviewing people for positions and seeing his office of the DOJ, et cetera, in around early May.
[00:17:39]  And the dates were important because other people, not George, like to reinvent history about that.
[00:17:46]  And so he took his name out of contention.
[00:17:49]  He wrote a beautiful note for the president and he posted it and he said, it's just not the right time for my wife and I both to have big jobs.
[00:17:58]  Then I was counselor to the president in the West Wing.
[00:18:02]  And he said, of course, I still support you and my wonderful wife and your agenda.
[00:18:06]  And also, that was May of 2017.
[00:18:09]  And so, did it take a toll?
[00:18:12]  My kids were used to a working mom.
[00:18:14]  I have worked since my first job legally on a blueberry farm when I was 12.
[00:18:19]  It was legal.
[00:18:20]  Everybody calmed down.
[00:18:21]  Don't give them any trouble.
[00:18:22]  It was legal to pack blueberries.
[00:18:23]  And I did that for eight summers.
[00:18:24]  And I loved it.
[00:18:25]  And I learned about teamwork and how if you work, somebody pays you for that work.
[00:18:30]  And we were paid by the piece.
[00:18:32]  You had 12 pints in a crate to pack.
[00:18:34]  And so I got 16 cents for an entire crate.
[00:18:38]  That's 12 pints.
[00:18:38]  And I figured out the faster I went, the more money I would make, etc.
[00:18:42]  And I've been working pretty much ever since.
[00:18:44]  And I love to work.
[00:18:46]  And my kids were accustomed to that.
[00:18:48]  Any working mom, I think, has to concede that there are changes and shifts and sacrifices you make and you should make and you're expected to make.
[00:18:57]  And everybody out there is saying, oh, no, it's not fair.
[00:18:59]  It has to be 50-50.
[00:19:02]  Good luck with that.
[00:19:03]  I think it's very important that, at least I know for my own self, it's very important to work and have something outside of just my children for my own mental health and my own mental sanity.
[00:19:12]  And there is definitely a trade-off that occurs.
[00:19:13]  But I think it's a good example for children.
[00:19:15]  Yes, since each grow.
[00:19:16]  And by the way, we've done plenty of research projects over the years, Katie, with respect to stay-at-home moms and women who work outside of her home working moms.
[00:19:25]  And, you know, this mommy wars was a little bit of an over-fictionalized creation.
[00:19:30]  It's got some truth to it where people, some people feel maybe insecure about the choice they've made one way or the other or the circumstance they're in.
[00:19:37]  Let's not kid ourselves.
[00:19:38]  Many women don't choose to work.
[00:19:39]  They must work.
[00:19:40]  And they're supporting themselves and their families.
[00:19:42]  I was raised by a single mom, I'm sure, who never thought she would have to go back to work.
[00:19:46]  She wouldn't have six kids.
[00:19:47]  She was one and done.
[00:19:49]  Enough, but she was put in a situation at the age of 26 where she was divorced with no child support, no alimony.
[00:19:56]  I met my father years later, when I was 12 or 13 years old, and so she she had the support and love of her family.
[00:20:04]  But when you have a child, you know that you are responsible for that child or children in our cases and so I give her a tremendous amount of credit, and I think I learned by watching that, if it's, it's important to have a skill set and a way to support yourself in case your husband loses his job or you lose your husband, and so that's the way I always look at it and that's the advice I try to pass on.
[00:20:27]  It's easy for me to say, I've got great privileges, I have money, I have security, I have my health, I have wisdom, I have accomplishments, I've got four amazing kids, but there's still always this feeling that you, you have to be.
[00:20:41]  You have to be out there applying your trade and earning, being able to earn money in some way to support those that you love.
[00:20:49]  You never know what's going to befall you.
[00:20:50]  You never know God forbid what crisis comes and what that costs, etc.
[00:20:54]  And who needs you.
[00:20:55]  But I grew up in a very happy albeit, you know, fatherless household.
[00:21:01]  I mean we had extended family, the men in my life, the uncles the, the friends of family.
[00:21:06]  It was a great way to grow up in the 70s and 80s in little South Jersey.
[00:21:10]  I didn't know what I didn't know and I got married late.
[00:21:14]  I got married at 34.
[00:21:15]  George was 37.
[00:21:17]  All four of our children were born when he was in his 40s.
[00:21:19]  I was 37, with the twins 41 and then 42, almost 43 with my last yes.
[00:21:25]  So I was quite surprised and everybody out there saying my daughter's too old or I'm too old or my eggs are too old.
[00:21:30]  Excuse me they, they like to say that there are, you know, no eggs left in your 40s.
[00:21:34]  I had two rolling around in their summer.
[00:21:35]  Their names are Charlotte and Vanessa.
[00:21:37]  They're 17 and almost 16.
[00:21:40]  So I mean God's been very good to me.
[00:21:42]  I feel very blessed and I think for me as a professional woman in the 90s, when I graduated law school and then clerked for the judge and went out on my own, I had to for me, everybody's different, but I had to wait to get married.
[00:21:57]  I had to defer and delay, but not deny altogether, marriage and motherhood.
[00:22:02]  And Katie, I like to tell women, as long as you are a product of your choices and not a victim of your circumstances, you're doing just fine.
[00:22:09]  But only you can know that, only you can make your choices.
[00:22:11]  You know the saying is our.
[00:22:13]  You know our thoughts define us our, our habits.
[00:22:17]  You know our thoughts shape us, our habits define us and really our choices are what distinguishes us.
[00:22:24]  And I always tell my kids, the three most important choices among the three most important choices you'll make are where you go to school, not just for education, but the people you meet, and maybe a life partner, maybe friends, professors who impress you, etc.
[00:22:37]  Not uh, where you go to school, whom you marry, or if you don't, and what you do when no one's looking.
[00:22:44]  Those are incredibly, others on mommy's list, but those are three important ones.
[00:22:49]  And uh, one of them said to me recently, wow well, you didn't get.
[00:22:53]  You know you're not batting a thousand.
[00:22:54]  I said well, that's true, but at least I tried and I acted on uh, my feelings and what I knew and and and love at the time.
[00:23:03]  So anyway, you asked me if you were to be able to do it.
[00:23:06]  I would say the campaign was very exciting for us as a family because we lived in Alpine, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City.
[00:23:13]  I was home most nights once in a while.
[00:23:15]  So the campaign was based out of New York.
[00:23:17]  The campaign was based out of New York City in Trump Tower's home most nights or in the mornings.
[00:23:21]  And when I wasn't, I would stay overnight and do the early shows, et cetera, and try to get back.
[00:23:25]  Worked then, as I did in the White House for four years, for an unbelievable girl boss.
[00:23:30]  President Trump is so good to women and he's so good, women employees, and he's so good to working moms, particularly.
[00:23:37]  None of us ever asked for a special treatment.
[00:23:40]  I've told the story before, but it's worth repeating on the Katie Miller podcast because you'll appreciate it firsthand, as will your husband.
[00:23:47]  That, you know, I looked up in the Roosevelt room one day, which is a skiff, and you and I were in the White House together then.
[00:23:53]  And I just happened, it just was a random Tuesday at 8.20 in the morning, and I was taking notes, and I looked around, and I saw Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Ivanka Trump and Brooke Rollins and Mercedes Schlapp and me.
[00:24:04]  And instead of writing in the margins my infinite to-do list, it never gets done, I started writing the names of our children.
[00:24:09]  And I came up with 19 children.
[00:24:12]  19 children, the five of us.
[00:24:14]  At the time, Katie, ages 2 through 16.
[00:24:17]  So show me the C-suite in America where that's possible.
[00:24:20]  Show me the C-suite in America where five working moms of 19 children ages 2 through 16 could actually have the highest rank in the company, assistant to the president.
[00:24:30]  And he created that.
[00:24:31]  So the campaign was a love affair for my family because the kids were excited with the posters.
[00:24:38]  I saved them all.
[00:24:39]  Did the kids know anything about the politics at the time or care about the politics at the time?
[00:24:43]  Not really.
[00:24:44]  They were proud of me.
[00:24:45]  They knew who Donald Trump was.
[00:24:47]  And George was so supportive.
[00:24:49]  I mean, George is the only person I told when President Trump asked me to be campaign manager on a Friday that summer.
[00:24:55]  And I like to say, like, if it were a man, he would have gone down to the corral of media who are always nested in Trump Tower and said, the campaign is in a different direction now.
[00:25:04]  I am in charge.
[00:25:05]  We will win.
[00:25:05]  And instead, I went down the side door.
[00:25:07]  I was like, oh my God, what if, will they see it on my face?
[00:25:09]  Will they ask me?
[00:25:11]  And the president was going to Altoona, Pennsylvania, somewhere else that day.
[00:25:13]  Ryan's previous to standing there.
[00:25:15]  And so I just had a brief, you know, and left.
[00:25:18]  And George said, you have to do this.
[00:25:20]  Said, Donald Trump can actually win with you.
[00:25:23]  He said, you have to, you know, I said, well, he's got a great team.
[00:25:25]  You know, we just need to make a couple of tweaks.
[00:25:27]  And he's the one going and making 10 stops a day.
[00:25:30]  Like, this is his campaign.
[00:25:32]  But I think it came from understanding the country for so long.
[00:25:38]  And things just clicked.
[00:25:39]  I mean, he made, President Trump has a great sense of so many things, like the culture, as I said earlier, but also just timing.
[00:25:45]  He hired me to do a poll, Michael Cohen, that one called me in 2011 to do a poll for President Trump about running against President Obama, or Mr. Trump running against President Obama.
[00:25:56]  And the poll said it was going to be a tough climb.
[00:25:59]  You know, Obama's special.
[00:26:00]  Do I think he could have been beaten?
[00:26:02]  Probably.
[00:26:03]  But I said to Mr. Trump at the time, I said, you know, Mr. Trump, you'll never truly know what America thinks of you until you're actually a declared candidate because you're Donald Trump.
[00:26:13]  And it's hard for some people to say, why would he want to do this?
[00:26:16]  He's already Donald Trump.
[00:26:18]  Other politicians are motivated by power and fame and money and a big staff and the ability to fly around the world or have their own plane.
[00:26:27]  Check, You know, already had a brilliant, beautiful wife.
[00:26:31]  Check, check, check.
[00:26:32]  And so people, it was hard for them to believe that he would want to do that.
[00:26:37]  And Milani at the time went one step further.
[00:26:39]  She said to him, she had been around him for years and she saw the way people reacted to him.
[00:26:44]  And she said, Donald, if you run, you have to be ready to be president because you will win.
[00:26:48]  She had faith from the very beginning because she had watched it up close all that time.
[00:26:52]  And her instincts are incredible.
[00:26:54]  She sees so much and she knows and she just shares so much with him.
[00:26:58]  And that's private for them, but I've witnessed it, like just the wisdom and the perception where she's seeing and reading and listening and understands what's going on in the culture, understands what he's thinking.
[00:27:14]  So, no, the campaign itself was wonderful on election night with my husband George crying in his MAGA hat.
[00:27:19]  It was a black and white MAGA hat.
[00:27:21]  She did it.
[00:27:22]  She did it.
[00:27:24]  He was so happy and our family was so proud.

=== Choosing How We Spend Time (15:59) ===

[00:27:28]  So then fast forward to, so May, he leaves his position.
[00:27:32]  Yes.
[00:27:32]  Steps out.
[00:27:33]  What happens then?
[00:27:34]  Yes.
[00:27:34]  He's never confirmed because they were still waiting for confirmation.
[00:27:38]  Well, he starts to turn on Trump.
[00:27:39]  He starts to tweet.
[00:27:40]  And in 2016.
[00:27:41]  Was there something that happened?
[00:27:43]  There was something that happened.
[00:27:44]  His first tweet was about Don McGahn or the Department of Justice or something or a judicial decision.
[00:27:49]  It's all a blur at this point because I didn't believe it was real.
[00:27:51]  Sean Spicer was coming toward me in the East Room.
[00:27:53]  We were all in there for an event.
[00:27:55]  And he's got his phone in his hand.
[00:27:57]  And he said, is this George's tweet?
[00:27:59]  And I said, it can't be.
[00:27:59]  George doesn't tweet.
[00:28:01]  Because in 2016, which was known as the year of the tweet because of Donald Trump and Twitter and his ability to use social media to connect with people directly and cut out the middle name.
[00:28:13]  George makes a Twitter account.
[00:28:14]  I didn't believe he had a Twitter account, but he never used it.
[00:28:17]  He never tweeted.
[00:28:17]  In the year of the tweet, George Conway sent no tweets in 2016.
[00:28:22]  So I'm sure he's well over 100%.
[00:28:23]  Do you think it was something with Don McGahn or someone encouraged him to do it?
[00:28:25]  No, no, no.
[00:28:26]  I don't think it was Don McGahn or anybody.
[00:28:27]  I think George saw that and stepped in and stepped up and wanted to make his voice known.
[00:28:34]  But it was, you know, he deleted a bunch of them at the beginning, as I recall.
[00:28:38]  To be honest, I don't remember every detail except that I can tell you the shock was real.
[00:28:43]  I have very thick shock absorbers, as you can imagine, as I know you do.
[00:28:47]  The shock was real.
[00:28:49]  The pain was very deep.
[00:28:51]  It just was not expected.
[00:28:53]  And just so we're clear, Katie, none of us, none of us or our spouses, we don't owe allegiance to a political party or a candidate or that issue or this idea.
[00:29:06]  We owe allegiance to the country, to God, if that's how you believe.
[00:29:12]  But we all took oaths to the Constitution, as you know, you've taken it.
[00:29:17]  But George's allegiance is to me.
[00:29:19]  The vows were to me.
[00:29:20]  And I think if there was a change for either one of us in opinion about this presidency, then the place to discuss that is at home.
[00:29:30]  Privately.
[00:29:30]  And that's the way we always did.
[00:29:32]  So when you go home, did you guys discuss this or did you gloss over it?
[00:29:37]  Well, I'm not a gloss over it kind of gal.
[00:29:39]  And I was really trying to mitigate it.
[00:29:41]  I was also trying to understand.
[00:29:42]  I was trying to mitigate the damage for our kids because it's funny, when we were in the White House, I would say from time to time, Ivanka Trump and Sarah Huckabee, I was like, their kids were ages like zero, two, four, seven, you know, whatever it was.
[00:29:55]  They were small.
[00:29:56]  And gosh, when they're older, when they're teenagers and tweens, they read everything.
[00:30:01]  And, you know, to hear at school, does your daddy hate your mommy now?
[00:30:04]  It's very hurtful.
[00:30:06]  And they're just their children.
[00:30:08]  Not that the media cared much.
[00:30:11]  They went, you know, but they went right for the jugular years later.
[00:30:14]  They exploited your children.
[00:30:15]  Direct messaging a 15-year-old girl, asking her to tell her more about her family.
[00:30:19]  By the way, just because I know they're watching, I know they're watching a podcast.
[00:30:22]  I have those direct messages, the ones that my daughter shared with me.
[00:30:26]  And I'm a fully recovered attorney, but I know about statues of limitations and I know about, so the Christian in me has not really been able to find forgiveness for all of them yet.
[00:30:38]  They're so awkward around me.
[00:30:39]  I think they just wonder.
[00:30:41]  If you know?
[00:30:42]  Well, because they think they never thought, they thought they would just do me in.
[00:30:46]  And if somebody's family or child is shrapnel, so be it, in the service of getting Trump.
[00:30:53]  By the way, the media's job is to get the story, but they believe that their mission, their calling in life is get Trump.
[00:30:59]  They don't do either at this point.
[00:31:01]  They're also their goal is to be the story.
[00:31:02]  There he is, yeah.
[00:31:03]  Their goal is to be the story.
[00:31:04]  So, no, it was very hurtful.
[00:31:06]  And then I think George got a new following.
[00:31:08]  He got fans.
[00:31:09]  So when you guys would talk at home about this, you know, obviously I think you both understood.
[00:31:16]  Maybe only you understood what, you know, your children seeing this later.
[00:31:21]  But yet it still continued for years.
[00:31:23]  So if you go and you look, I'm sure you won't find many responses from me, if at all.
[00:31:29]  I was asked one or two times what I thought.
[00:31:32]  And, you know, do you think the president should go out?
[00:31:35]  And 60 Minutes wanted to interview me and us and all the morning shows, they'll deny it again, have those texts.
[00:31:43]  And I ended up just giving a brief interview unexpectedly to Maria Bardaroma.
[00:31:48]  She was here in Washington.
[00:31:49]  I gave her an interview for one of the business shows and she started asking me about it and I just gave her the answer.
[00:31:55]  Like it's very, it's very hurtful and I believe in discussing family matters privately.
[00:32:01]  And so and it's funny because people think that somehow President Trump and George were in this spat.
[00:32:09]  President Trump rarely mentioned him.
[00:32:11]  He mentioned him a couple times in answers to a very specific question, but never said his name because that's what President Trump does.
[00:32:16]  He doesn't say your name if he just doesn't want to make you relevant.
[00:32:20]  And he said, oh, you mean Mr. Kellyanne Conway?
[00:32:22]  I don't know.
[00:32:23]  You have to ask her.
[00:32:24]  I don't know him well.
[00:32:26]  And she's wonderful.
[00:32:27]  I don't know why he would do that.
[00:32:29]  And so, but it was really few and far between.
[00:32:31]  I can't say when I walked into the Oval Office for a meeting, if the president called me for something, if I was just working on something, minding my own business, that that was his overhang.
[00:32:40]  It wasn't.
[00:32:41]  And I had a lot of support from family, extended family, friends, his friends, a lot of his friends.
[00:32:49]  They just didn't understand what it was because he so adored me and so loved me and so loved our marriage.
[00:32:55]  Do you think it was just the celebrity of it all?
[00:32:58]  I don't know.
[00:32:59]  I think you can have George on your podcast and ask him, but I don't know.
[00:33:03]  I even hate to think about it.
[00:33:05]  But I will say that when whoever wants to read Twitter over time, they'll see who was active and who was basically silent.
[00:33:15]  I mean, to this moment, I'm not on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.
[00:33:18]  I don't begrudge anybody who is.
[00:33:20]  So no, look, I think when people go back and read, they'll see that I did not partake in the fighting.
[00:33:26]  I just didn't.
[00:33:27]  And I had to put the kids first and be a mother first.
[00:33:30]  And maybe they're still too young to understand that.
[00:33:33]  I don't need a gold star.
[00:33:34]  I'm not judging anybody else's conduct here.
[00:33:36]  I can only, you're responsible for yourself.
[00:33:38]  Did you ever think about stepping out from your job during that time period and just having it all go away?
[00:33:43]  I did.
[00:33:44]  I don't think it would have gone away.
[00:33:47]  I did think about that.
[00:33:48]  And then I worried about safety.
[00:33:51]  I worried, I very much worried about safety.
[00:33:54]  I felt like I was safe where I was.
[00:33:57]  And I definitely was respected, but I really also felt like I was safe.
[00:34:00]  And you know what, Katie, I also love my work.
[00:34:02]  This is such a beautiful country filled with amazing people.
[00:34:05]  And you should not have these jobs in the administration, let alone the West Wing, unless you feel that way.
[00:34:09]  Regardless of party, like you have to love the country so much.
[00:34:12]  You're sacrificing time, your health and sleep.
[00:34:15]  You're sacrificing money, certainly.
[00:34:17]  You're making so many sacrifices.
[00:34:19]  You have to love the work and the people that it impacts.
[00:34:22]  I call it the RPI, the real people impact.
[00:34:25]  What are we doing?
[00:34:26]  I've heard you say that.
[00:34:27]  No, but it's true.
[00:34:28]  What are we doing?
[00:34:29]  And who is it helping and hurting?
[00:34:32]  So there was that.
[00:34:33]  Plus, I knew what would happen if I left.
[00:34:35]  I was going to be flooded with offers for grossly overpaid speeches abroad like my predecessors in the West Wing who weren't as well known and hadn't lasted as long were taken advantage of.
[00:34:45]  So I said, well, my job worked for me also because I had a boss that was on my side and assigned me things and trusted me to do things that mattered and had consequence.
[00:34:56]  But more importantly, he and his wife and the team, they supported me.
[00:35:02]  And that's a different kind of support than you get from your family, friends, your children.
[00:35:05]  My mother lived with us.
[00:35:06]  Thank God.
[00:35:07]  God rest her soul.
[00:35:09]  And I'll say this.
[00:35:11]  I lived very close.
[00:35:13]  You know, we lived here.
[00:35:14]  We moved the kids here as a family.
[00:35:16]  They were in schools here.
[00:35:17]  And so I also couldn't believe and uproot them all over again.
[00:35:22]  That wasn't going to be fair.
[00:35:24]  And even, you know, toward the end, you know, everybody went to high school in different places because that was the choice we allowed COVID times, et cetera.
[00:35:34]  But no, I'll never understand.
[00:35:36]  If I tried to talk about it, you know, George just really didn't want to talk about it or just yelled expletives about President Trump and that's fine.
[00:35:42]  But I'm here to trash him.
[00:35:44]  I don't.
[00:35:45]  I don't talk about him.
[00:35:46]  I'm just amazed at all the people who never had any time for him or any relationship with him or didn't even bother to get to know Kellyanne Conway's husband in any meaningful way, elevated him in this way.
[00:36:01]  And the Lincoln Project people using him and his name, he didn't take a penny from the Lincoln Project, not a penny.
[00:36:08]  And the rest of them took lots of pennies.
[00:36:09]  And what do they have to show for it?
[00:36:11]  Donald Trump will be in the big house, never get in the White House.
[00:36:13]  How's that working out, everybody?
[00:36:15]  So they just don't get America.
[00:36:17]  No, he's, I mean, George is still doing that on X, right, every day.
[00:36:20]  I guess.
[00:36:20]  I really don't know, to be honest with you.
[00:36:22]  I suppose so.
[00:36:23]  I assume so.
[00:36:26]  I just don't live my life that way.
[00:36:28]  I decided that I was going to be able to do that.
[00:36:28]  And are you that he still goes after your friends and people in your life in a public way, even if you're not paying attention to it?
[00:36:37]  You know, does that it's not a reflection onto you, obviously.
[00:36:41]  But I mean, do you just pay it no mind that that's still happening?
[00:36:45]  I pay it no mind.
[00:36:46]  You're telling me things I don't even know.
[00:36:47]  And I hope I really feel others know that.
[00:36:50]  I mean, you and I were at a fun dinner last night that's totally private and quiet.
[00:36:54]  And you walk in.
[00:36:55]  I never know if there's going to be four people or 40 people.
[00:36:58]  I didn't know either.
[00:36:59]  The point being, like, when I read these people saying, oh, DC is not fun anymore and Donald Trump took the fun out.
[00:37:04]  And I'm like, you just don't get invited to the right things.
[00:37:06]  But, you know, people don't hold me to account for his behavior.
[00:37:09]  I know that because they're my friends.
[00:37:11]  And also, I just decided a very long time ago, Katie, but I especially remade that decision time and time again when my children's other parent is so active online.
[00:37:22]  I got to live my life offline, not online.
[00:37:25]  And if I can give one piece of unsolicited advice to people is to do more of that.
[00:37:29]  Offline just looks better, smells better, feels better, is better.
[00:37:33]  And it's where life is truly lived and experienced.
[00:37:38]  And so again, we all have to decide how we choose our time.
[00:37:42]  And again, it's not about George or anybody else.
[00:37:45]  It's just about we all have to choose how we spend our time.
[00:37:47]  We all have the same 24 hours in the day.
[00:37:49]  My kids need me.
[00:37:50]  I don't have a week on, a week off.
[00:37:52]  They live with me.
[00:37:54]  The fancy new age word co-parent, just fine.
[00:37:58]  I wish him well, etc.
[00:38:00]  But, you know, I will say to the women out there, 50 years after my mom got no child support and no alimony, I didn't either because I didn't qualify for it.
[00:38:10]  50 years after she didn't ask for it, didn't demand it, I didn't qualify for it.
[00:38:15]  So it's a very funky time.
[00:38:17]  And, you know, when people say, oh, we're all the same.
[00:38:19]  And she's like, okay, thanks for that.
[00:38:23]  But anyway, but I mean, I'm happy and healthy and I hope George is.
[00:38:28]  Certainly, he's the father of my children.
[00:38:29]  We married for a very long time.
[00:38:31]  He's the only person I've ever married.
[00:38:33]  But you stayed together throughout the entire administration and didn't divorce until the end.
[00:38:37]  Was that intentional by you, just to try to keep everything together for the kids?
[00:38:42]  It was for, we certainly weren't together as a couple, but I, but it's, yes, I wanted to, I wanted at least to make sure everything else that we were dealing with came first.
[00:38:55]  And I want to just also say something that I've said to my children very recently.
[00:38:58]  Divorce is not a great thing.
[00:39:00]  It's a terrible thing.
[00:39:01]  That's not judgy.
[00:39:03]  I am divorced.
[00:39:03]  My mother was divorced.
[00:39:05]  My father was divorced three times.
[00:39:07]  I get it.
[00:39:07]  But I want people to understand, like, it's got to be for me the choice of last resort.
[00:39:13]  And when I say, Katie, that, because I think a strong, healthy, forever marriage is a beautiful thing.
[00:39:20]  And when you say for better or for worse, that implicitly means you're going to tough things out for rich or for poor in sickness and health, etc.
[00:39:28]  You're going to tough things out.
[00:39:30]  Things are going to get hard.
[00:39:31]  Maybe your best day is your first day or your first year or your second year.
[00:39:34]  But things are going to get hard, but you manage through them as a couple.
[00:39:37]  And we did.
[00:39:38]  We absolutely did that over time.
[00:39:41]  Bad health diagnoses, burying loved ones who we miss dearly, being there for each other, ups and downs professionally.
[00:39:51]  Again, being the only two parents in the world, two people in the world responsible for these beautiful children.
[00:39:56]  So we did that beautifully and for a very long time.
[00:40:00]  So for me, for somebody who's telling you, as long as women feel like they're mostly products of their choices, not victims of circumstances, I felt it was one of those rare times in my life where I was without a choice.
[00:40:13]  I felt I had no choice but to file for divorce.
[00:40:16]  And it's very sad for many reasons because it is the end of a relationship.
[00:40:23]  It's the end of an institution.
[00:40:25]  It's the end of, but I felt it was necessary, and I explained that to my kids.
[00:40:29]  I don't want them to ever think that I anyway took that lightly or glibly or that the quote haters won or whatever.
[00:40:38]  These are miserable people.
[00:40:39]  Have you seen these people?
[00:40:40]  Terrible.
[00:40:41]  Terrified, very terrible.
[00:40:41]  Terrible, thin-skinned people.
[00:40:44]  Yes.
[00:40:46]  And I knew the toll that divorce had taken on my mom and other people in my life.
[00:40:51]  It's not a great thing.
[00:40:52]  And so, but it was necessary.
[00:40:54]  And I've come out on the other side, you know, very happy, very healthy.
[00:40:57]  Is your relationship with him better now that you're divorced?
[00:41:01]  It's fine.
[00:41:02]  It's fine.
[00:41:03]  We have these kids.
[00:41:06]  They know that we're there for them.
[00:41:08]  Did the kids get to choose who they spend their time with or where they go to school and keep things consistent?
[00:41:13]  They're old enough for that.
[00:41:14]  They absolutely do.
[00:41:15]  They're old enough for that.
[00:41:16]  And we respect that.
[00:41:17]  As I say, we've got two adults and one about to be, quote unquote, on her way to college, God bless her.
[00:41:25]  And then the youngest one is almost 16.
[00:41:28]  And so, yes, they do get to choose that.
[00:41:31]  And they know they are loved and respected and cared for.
[00:41:34]  And I have to say, I'm an only child and George is an only child.
[00:41:37]  I love that these kids have each other.
[00:41:39]  Like, it is not cliche to say the greatest gift I've given these kids is each other.
[00:41:45]  They can fight like siblings and love like siblings, but they have each other forever.
[00:41:49]  So at the time when Claudia was posting a lot on the internet, you mentioned reporters messaging her for all of these stories.
[00:41:57]  At home, I would say the biggest lesson that I want to learn from you is how you navigated that.
[00:42:04]  Because I think in the age of media and the age of TikTok, I ask myself all the time, when would I give my child a phone or how would I police that?
[00:42:12]  And I think how you manage that is incredibly powerful for other moms going through a similar situation right now.
[00:42:19]  So can you walk us through a bit of that time period?
[00:42:22]  Yeah, but let me just start out with Claudia.
[00:42:24]  I mean, objectively, I know I'm biased because I'm her mom and we're very close.
[00:42:27]  If I showed you my phone right now, it's Claudia.
[00:42:31]  Do you do the dead air conversations now where you just sit on the phone all day?
[00:42:34]  We do a lot.
[00:42:35]  We do plenty of live air, dead air.
[00:42:37]  I'm just, I am just astonished about the spectacular human beings that my four children are.
[00:42:43]  They really are.
[00:42:44]  And God bless them.
[00:42:46]  Claudia is objectively beautiful and brilliant.
[00:42:48]  She's entrepreneurial.
[00:42:50]  She's smart.
[00:42:50]  She's very generous and loving.
[00:42:53]  The time she spends in care and in service of the elders in our family is truly remarkable.
[00:43:00]  But all four of my kids are remarkable.
[00:43:01]  They're all individuals.
[00:43:03]  I love them all equally and I respond to them individually.
[00:43:06]  And Claudia needed a different kind of love and nurturing and response at that time.
[00:43:13]  The idea, just so we're clear, the idea that anyone, let alone professionals in the media, could direct message your 15-year-old daughter and think it's okay is absurd.

=== Cherishing Family Privacy (15:08) ===

[00:43:27]  It's completely absurd.
[00:43:29]  But these are the same people who think you can just hand a 14-year-old birth control or send, you know, pills to the front door along with the Amazon.
[00:43:39]  Give them more dogs to change their gender.
[00:43:41]  Yeah, all of it.
[00:43:42]  Thank you.
[00:43:42]  All of it.
[00:43:43]  And so I believe there ought to be some kind of standards.
[00:43:48]  I'm not a big regulation gal, as you can imagine, a big limited government gal, but I think there should be some kind of standards and rules.
[00:43:55]  It turns out there aren't any, Katie, not in this country, where what is the rule?
[00:43:59]  Okay, so if you're 15 and you can't smoke, vape, drink, vote, get your ears pierced, see an R-rated movie drive, you can do a million things that every young woman wants to do because you're not of age yet.
[00:44:13]  Imagine if it were, I don't know, a male, and a lot of the female reporters got off the hook because they felt they were allowed to direct message a 15-year-old girl.
[00:44:22]  Whereas a male reporter might be seen as, what are you doing, messaging a 15-year-old girl?
[00:44:26]  The same thing you're doing.
[00:44:27]  And the reporter who first outed her is our daughter.
[00:44:31]  She's a basket case.
[00:44:33]  And she's, I'm not even going to say her name because she's not worth it.
[00:44:36]  And it turns out, you know, she cries on TV.
[00:44:40]  She's been fired from three or four jobs.
[00:44:42]  She once, as somebody showed me, she once, you know, had a mask on.
[00:44:47]  She's like, I'm not going to even put it down for a sip of water for seven hours on my way to California or Seattle.
[00:44:51]  Just Timberlawrence.
[00:44:53]  Maybe.
[00:44:54]  And anyway, just like when you dig into these people, and then she has the audacity to come up to me at the Democratic Convention.
[00:45:01]  So I should come back for a sequel and go through that one.
[00:45:04]  But again, like, who are these people who are afraid of their shadows, have no idea what it's like to be a mother, have no idea what it's like to be, grew up very privileged in Greenwich, Connecticut, and went to boarding school in Switzerland.
[00:45:16]  That's her, but she has no idea about her life.
[00:45:19]  None.
[00:45:20]  And so, but I do blame other people and people should say we should blame Claudia.
[00:45:25]  She knew.
[00:45:26]  Claudia is my daughter.
[00:45:27]  And whatever I have discussed with Claudia and whatever we have done together and said together as a family or as a mother and a daughter, that's going to stay between us.
[00:45:36]  I bet I can go make $10 million today.
[00:45:38]  Someone will give me an interview, a book deal, it ain't happening, folks.
[00:45:42]  That's my daughter.
[00:45:43]  And I am a mama bear.
[00:45:45]  And we're not done here for a very simple reason because that shouldn't happen.
[00:45:50]  And I really, you know, Claudia's got a million different things going on at all times.
[00:45:55]  And she, as I say, but she, I have encouraged her to at least think about, you know, think about maybe starting a center for, you know, women and girls or find a nonprofit that already exists, that's not woke, that's, you know, very reasonable, really gets the money and the care to girls about their, about tech safety and all of that.
[00:46:19]  She's got, she's got some good claims on her hand.
[00:46:22]  She does.
[00:46:22]  Does she see it now?
[00:46:23]  Like, why did she say that?
[00:46:25]  Claudia's official to her.
[00:46:26]  Well, Claudia's off social media.
[00:46:28]  First of all, I had her on my podcast a year ago.
[00:46:30]  I don't have that podcast anymore.
[00:46:32]  I'm sorry.
[00:46:33]  I had her on my Fox Station show.
[00:46:35]  And I think it was the most watched episode and the president's after that.
[00:46:39]  He came on after that.
[00:46:40]  So at that time it was the most watched.
[00:46:41]  And everybody can pull it up for themselves, Fox Nation.
[00:46:45]  She was still 19.
[00:46:49]  She was just almost 20 then.
[00:46:50]  But the poise, it was 9-11.
[00:46:52]  She lived near ground zero.
[00:46:53]  It took her forever and a day to get there that day.
[00:46:56]  The poise, the intelligence, the balance.
[00:46:59]  She had gone to the Democratic Convention.
[00:47:01]  said, I think young people are excited about Kamala Harris, but I don't, I don't put her on a pedestal.
[00:47:05]  I just see her as someone who, are her politics still the same now?
[00:47:10]  I don't know.
[00:47:11]  I don't know.
[00:47:12]  I think she's got, Claudia has, Claudia has a very strong will and a very open source.
[00:47:20]  Open mind, absolutely.
[00:47:21]  My mom always said what I say to Claudia, my mom always said, you're going to have one just like you.
[00:47:25]  And I, yes.
[00:47:27]  But anyway, she is, you know, we're great.
[00:47:29]  And people will come up to me and say, you know, some guy tried recently and I was on the phone with Claudia.
[00:47:36]  Your daughter hates you.
[00:47:37]  And I said, no, she doesn't.
[00:47:38]  I said, do you want to talk to her?
[00:47:39]  And I'm like, I don't need to explain to this pot-bellied middle-aged guy with clothes on from three days ago, who's a big hot mess, what my life is.
[00:47:48]  That's the thing.
[00:47:49]  Katie, I want people to know that I said live offline, not online, but I want to go a step further.
[00:47:54]  Motherhood is not performative.
[00:47:57]  It's not, you don't execute and then get a result right away.
[00:48:02]  Like you do it for all the incentives in our system and our culture now are almost the opposite of what motherhood does as a reward.
[00:48:11]  The reward of motherhood is just in the doing, is in the everyday.
[00:48:15]  I'm not a great cook, but I'm a consistent one.
[00:48:18]  So I try to make for them.
[00:48:20]  Making sure you're there in the morning when they're leaving for school or taking them to school.
[00:48:25]  Motherhood is about presence.
[00:48:27]  And the irony for my job in the White House is, because they're all under my roof and we live together, you can be present.
[00:48:33]  You have to be present and patient.
[00:48:34]  Everybody loves their kids.
[00:48:35]  That's a natural thing.
[00:48:37]  But the way you get peace and the way you get that connected tissue where they'll look you in the eyes and you can have conversations is by being present and patient.
[00:48:46]  And so I just, you know, we're telling our kids, you know, be honest and be hardworking and be generous and be kind.
[00:48:59]  Get enough rest and take care of yourself.
[00:49:01]  And like they need to see that on us first.
[00:49:04]  They really do.
[00:49:05]  What did your other kids think of that time period?
[00:49:08]  Like obviously when Claudia was posting a lot online, et cetera, I'm sure that took some toll on just going home and dealing with all of that.
[00:49:16]  Like what were the other kids thinking, doing, feeling similarly to her?
[00:49:22]  I don't want to characterize their feelings except to say that this is a very strong family.
[00:49:26]  Those are amazing kids who are all making their way in this world on their own timeline, in their own way.
[00:49:33]  I know every parent says, I love you no matter what.
[00:49:36]  Do what you want to do.
[00:49:37]  Make your own mistakes.
[00:49:38]  Make your own choices.
[00:49:39]  Have your own successes.
[00:49:41]  I guide them the best I can.
[00:49:44]  They know they've got unconditional love and infinite support from me and from their other loved ones.
[00:49:50]  So I will tell you that we cherish, you know, my kids cherish privacy.
[00:49:58]  They do.
[00:50:00]  They cherish privacy and normalcy.
[00:50:03]  And I, you know, people say, well, then if you wanted them to have a normal life, you shouldn't work in the White House.
[00:50:08]  Oh, did you say that to, I guess you didn't have to say it to them because they hardly worked when they were there.
[00:50:13]  But I mean, the long weekend started on Tuesday night.
[00:50:17]  So in any event, ended on Monday morning.
[00:50:19]  But when you're out there, I will say that they cherish privacy.
[00:50:23]  And I know Claudia does too.
[00:50:25]  Claudia, she tells me she's not on social media.
[00:50:29]  She was very active on TikTok.
[00:50:31]  People had a big following.
[00:50:33]  They always wanted her opinion.
[00:50:35]  They wanted her to write.
[00:50:37]  She had, you know, she's worked in a couple of places that have paid her to do that.
[00:50:42]  And she also, she sees what it is.
[00:50:45]  And again, I think she's a really good arbiter.
[00:50:48]  And I want to say this, you know, Claudia got what a lot of Americans want, a lot of girls want, which is attention and likes and money and fame and position.
[00:50:59]  And we'll send a limo for you.
[00:51:01]  Come on our TV show.
[00:51:02]  Tell us about your mom and dad.
[00:51:03]  What are your mom and dad doing right now?
[00:51:05]  Really?
[00:51:05]  What are yours?
[00:51:06]  What's your husband doing?
[00:51:07]  Who's he with right now?
[00:51:08]  I'm going to ask them, or maybe I already have.
[00:51:11]  So, you know, but it's, look, everybody says, my kids are resilient.
[00:51:16]  My kids are strong.
[00:51:17]  That may be true.
[00:51:18]  Folks, my kids are resilient.
[00:51:19]  My kids are strong.
[00:51:20]  I know it.
[00:51:21]  I know it.
[00:51:22]  And so a good for them.
[00:51:24]  But look, we also, the president and the first lady and many others were absolutely lovely to us, to me, the entire time.
[00:51:34]  And if their father is posting about different people who I love and are friends of mine and in my life, I don't know it and I'm not responsible for it.
[00:51:42]  And I certainly don't agree with it.
[00:51:44]  Do I agree with his First Amendment?
[00:51:47]  Of course.
[00:51:47]  But it's just not how I choose to spend my time.
[00:51:50]  I would say that Claudia is, it's very impressive to take a step back from everything that was thrown at her and live, you know, and be strong and live a different life now.
[00:51:58]  Because I think a lot of people want TikTok fame and then to have that continue on for years instead of stepping away from it.
[00:52:03]  Yes.
[00:52:04]  So your friends, friends come and go in life.
[00:52:07]  And I'm sure you've seen friends come and go the same way people have come in none of your life because of President Trump and other reasons.
[00:52:13]  What's been, besides your marriage, probably some of the more, I would say, pertinent stories of friends who have either left in because of the divorce or left because President Trump?
[00:52:28]  Well, I don't know that we had many friends in the marriage that didn't predate the marriage.
[00:52:33]  And my friends are all offline friends.
[00:52:36]  So I have the same friends I had from when I was in kindergarten.
[00:52:39]  I was with my best friend this weekend at a Philadelphia Eagles game with my two younger daughters and her sons.
[00:52:45]  My friend, the thing about my friends that I've chosen as family is they really don't care where I work and where I live and what I do and what I wear and how I look.
[00:52:57]  They care about me and they are friends that I've chosen as family for my children.
[00:53:04]  My children know they can rely upon them.
[00:53:06]  I remember when Claudia first got a phone when she's younger, she said, mom, my number one entry is aunt because you call everybody aunt.
[00:53:15]  My cousins, obviously she calls Ann her godmother, Renee, my first cousin, I'm close to.
[00:53:19]  Her brother Jay, I'm very close to, and their families.
[00:53:22]  But all my extended friends who are so excited, they were so excited for me when President Trump won.
[00:53:28]  They were so excited that they can come to the Easter egg roll of this, but they were super excited, not jealous.
[00:53:34]  I think the only ones that are really no longer part of my life has nothing to do with divorce.
[00:53:39]  It has more to do with where were they when all that was happening.
[00:53:43]  And I would say two of them sort of confronted George, but in a nice way.
[00:53:49]  Like, what's going on?
[00:53:50]  How can we stop this train from barreling down the path?
[00:53:53]  You know, you guys love each other and you have these kids and you have this whole life together.
[00:53:57]  And isn't that more important?
[00:54:01]  But most people did what people do.
[00:54:03]  Many people, not most, many people did what I think this country does too much of, which is we suffer from an epidemic of looking the other way, Katie.
[00:54:12]  We just look the other way.
[00:54:13]  Like we never saw that.
[00:54:14]  We don't see someone's pain.
[00:54:15]  We don't see their needs.
[00:54:17]  We don't see, I mean, we can go and whisper about it over there, but we pretend that we don't see it.
[00:54:22]  So I think the couple of friends that I am no longer in contact with because of whoever's choice doesn't have to do with politics.
[00:54:33]  It has to do with the personal.
[00:54:34]  It has to do with, look, I expect I expect other teenage girls to be jealous of teenage girls.
[00:54:43]  I don't expect their mothers to be.
[00:54:45]  And that's just weird.
[00:54:47]  And those are the, you know, that's just what happened.
[00:54:50]  And look, we have privacy.
[00:54:51]  Claudia has a twin brother.
[00:54:52]  People don't even realize that half the time.
[00:54:54]  He's Mr. MAGA, Mr. Privacy.
[00:54:58]  He's exactly, you know, he and his friends here for the inauguration, 10, 12 deep at the house is really fun to see and at the Wywood rally.
[00:55:07]  But what I love is not even like the excitement part of it.
[00:55:10]  I love how they discuss issues.
[00:55:12]  I didn't know half of what they know at the age of 20 and 19.
[00:55:17]  And it's great to hear that.
[00:55:19]  And to your point about President Trump and how politics has just taken over a large swath of the country.
[00:55:24]  Well, it has.
[00:55:25]  But, you know, Katie, people just, look, Trump derangement syndrome is real.
[00:55:30]  There is no vaccine, therapeutic, or cure.
[00:55:33]  It addles the brain.
[00:55:35]  It shuts down your sense of humor.
[00:55:39]  And it just obsesses, it becomes like an obsessive problem where everything is through the lens of Trump.
[00:55:49]  So, yeah, but you know what?
[00:55:52]  I think we take our cues from President Trump on that.
[00:55:55]  He went through more than anybody, obviously.
[00:55:59]  Insulted, investigated, impeached, indicted, tried to imprison.
[00:56:04]  I mean, just terrible what they did to him, his family, his business, all of it.
[00:56:08]  His staff, his friends.
[00:56:10]  And there he is.
[00:56:12]  You know, it's a great American story about resilience and about not letting other people define you, about you thinking that there's a greater call, a higher purpose to your time here.
[00:56:23]  And I remember when he was out of office and I would go visit him at Mar-a-Laga or we'd talk on the phone.
[00:56:28]  I remember doing one visit, I said, you know, you don't have to do that.
[00:56:31]  We'd all love to have you back, but you don't have to.
[00:56:34]  And the only reason I said it was because I care about him.
[00:56:36]  You know, and so, and he doesn't have to, but he wanted to, and the country wanted him to.
[00:56:40]  So on the flip side of losing friends, who was or is still your best friend in the Trump administration?
[00:56:45]  In the Trump administration?
[00:56:47]  Oh, that's such a great question.
[00:56:48]  I honestly have so many.
[00:56:51]  Of course, I love the Millers and I've known you forever, danced at your wedding, which was unbelievable fun.
[00:56:56]  Great stories from your wedding, actually.
[00:56:58]  A lot of fun.
[00:56:59]  And I say I'm very close to, ironically, very close to Brooke Rollins, Lyndon McMahon, Pam Bonnie.
[00:57:08]  These are friends that preceded their time in office, which is really exciting.
[00:57:14]  But there are people like Kevin Hassett who were in both administrations, who I consider a dear friend.
[00:57:20]  I don't consider any of them not my friend.
[00:57:23]  I consider, you know, there are people who maybe are more acquaintances or I didn't work with you.
[00:57:27]  Who's someone from Trump One we're happy to leave behind?
[00:57:30]  Oh my God.
[00:57:33]  Dear.
[00:57:34]  There's a lot of them.
[00:57:35]  Yeah, I mean, I think I hate to even say the names because it makes them relevant, but somebody just sent me his defense of this Jay Jones clown in Virginia who's running for Attorney General who said he wishes that Tim Gilbert would have bullets in his head and his wife is evil and they're raising two little Nazis, et cetera, fascist Vinmin, the Vinmin boys.
[00:57:57]  I think people who betrayed the trust of the office, again, you can change your mind about Donald Trump or the Republican Party, but you took an oath and to just pretend that that no longer exists because people are throwing TV time at you or congressional seats or book contracts.
[00:58:14]  So I'd say anyone like that, definitely the guy who called himself anonymous, who should have remained anonymous.
[00:58:20]  I know his name, but I like his anonymous.
[00:58:22]  No, I think he should have remained anonymous.
[00:58:28]  But, you know, Katie, you live and you learn.
[00:58:31]  And I think that everything from the first term, first of all, a lot got done that doesn't get covered.

=== Being an Ally from Outside (15:25) ===

[00:58:36]  He'll get credit for that later.
[00:58:37]  But so much of it was building blocks for the future too, where the president says, I know Washington better.
[00:58:42]  I make my own personnel choices and decisions.
[00:58:45]  And this is the team I have.
[00:58:46]  But yeah.
[00:58:48]  What's the most common question you get about your time in the Trump White House or President Trump that you get when you're just walking?
[00:58:53]  What is he really like?
[00:58:54]  Tell us a funny story.
[00:58:55]  And I always have so many that never disclose any private confidential moment.
[00:59:01]  But I love that question because I immediately light up and I can share great stories.
[00:59:08]  And what is he really like?
[00:59:09]  I said, he's exactly what you see on the camera now more than ever is who he is behind the scenes.
[00:59:15]  But I like who he's not also.
[00:59:17]  So we had four or five communications directors in the White House in the first term.
[00:59:22]  And I remember at least, I think all of them, but at least all but one of them had come in and were recommending, like, I think the president should, I got a great idea.
[00:59:32]  I got a great idea.
[00:59:33]  What is it?
[00:59:34]  I think he should, you know, go have ice cream with his grandchildren.
[00:59:37]  At the time, he had nine, now 11 grandchildren.
[00:59:40]  And I'm like, you can ask now.
[00:59:42]  I don't think he's going to do that, but you can ask him.
[00:59:44]  It's a nice idea.
[00:59:45]  And he'd be like, I have ice cream with him all the time, but I don't need the press there.
[00:59:48]  So I like all the things, you know, just keeping it real.
[00:59:51]  He shows us, but I even like the things that he doesn't do because they're performative.
[00:59:54]  It's like a plastic politician.
[00:59:56]  Like, and now I'm having ice cream with my grandchild.
[00:59:58]  Sit on my lap, skipper.
[01:00:00]  So, yeah, no, that's the number one question I get.
[01:00:03]  And I also get the question, why aren't you there?
[01:00:06]  You know, but that's a choice I made.
[01:00:09]  My girls, I'm a single mom.
[01:00:10]  I don't need a big sale.
[01:00:11]  No one's living out of a car.
[01:00:13]  But my younger daughters are a senior and sophomore in high school.
[01:00:16]  And I told the president even during the campaign, you got to look at me the way you looked at Milani the last few years.
[01:00:21]  She had a son in high school.
[01:00:22]  And, you know, him though.
[01:00:23]  He's like, that's okay.
[01:00:24]  Come when you can.
[01:00:25]  And I'm like, no, we can't do that.
[01:00:28]  But I so support the work of this administration.
[01:00:30]  I'm trying to be an ally from the outside.
[01:00:33]  So I would say, I mentioned at the top of the show, but you're definitely a household name.
[01:00:37]  I think a lot of people would know your picture and know exactly who you are.
[01:00:40]  Especially, I would say, those odds go up in Washington, D.C. What's that like when you're sitting at a restaurant or with your kids and someone wants to come up and either say something positive or negative?
[01:00:50]  How do you get it?
[01:00:51]  I'm so positive now.
[01:00:52]  I'd say when I first moved to Washington, one out of seven or eight were downright mean or menacing.
[01:00:58]  And I had 24-7 Secret Service because there are crazy people out there.
[01:01:03]  And I say now it's one out of, my God, 90, 95.
[01:01:09]  Most people, because honestly, those people are just stewing in their misery.
[01:01:13]  They don't know what to say.
[01:01:14]  They've said it all.
[01:01:15]  They tried it all.
[01:01:15]  It's a marked change.
[01:01:16]  I would say that as well.
[01:01:17]  Like when we go out, it used to be in the first term you get screamed at.
[01:01:20]  And this time people just leave you alone.
[01:01:21]  Either leave you alone or it's people will come up and they'll say, you know, a lot of may I take a picture.
[01:01:29]  Oh my God, you're doing a great job.
[01:01:31]  We love watching you on Fox or tell the president he's great.
[01:01:35]  A lot of people these days, Katie, they come up to me in airports and wherever restaurants they'll say, thank you.
[01:01:42]  I'll say, oh, like, no, no, no, thank you.
[01:01:44]  You were there at the beginning and we love him and you put up with a lot and that was not fair to you and your family.
[01:01:50]  Thank you.
[01:01:52]  The thing people really never say and some of this city should is, I'm sorry.
[01:01:56]  This is not a city that apologizes for very much.
[01:01:59]  They just think they move on to the next quote news story and they decide what that is.
[01:02:03]  And I know the difference between news and noise.
[01:02:05]  I have a good nose for that.
[01:02:08]  But no, most people are so lovely.
[01:02:11]  And they, I'm just surprised how many people.
[01:02:14]  And I was walking with my son one day years ago.
[01:02:16]  He's like, mom, don't even bother.
[01:02:18]  I had on the baseball hat and the sunglasses, the hair back.
[01:02:21]  He's like, don't bother because then you talk because he knows I love to talk.
[01:02:24]  He's got three sisters, God bless him.
[01:02:26]  So we love to talk.
[01:02:26]  He knows exactly what you're going to say.
[01:02:28]  And he's like, Mom, people here and they know your voice.
[01:02:31]  So if you're going to disguise yourself, you can't talk.
[01:02:34]  But anyway, it's, no, people are lovely.
[01:02:37]  And my kids put up a lot.
[01:02:38]  Even at the Eagles game the other day, my youngest one is taking the pictures.
[01:02:41]  People are like, can I take a picture with you?
[01:02:42]  Now you're like, you're an Eagle fan.
[01:02:43]  I like you even more.
[01:02:45]  And then once in a while, somebody will say something nasty.
[01:02:48]  How do you handle that?
[01:02:49]  Okay, so my MO is I never draw first blood.
[01:02:55]  I always get the last word.
[01:02:57]  I don't start it, but I know how it ends.
[01:02:59]  I mean, I think there's a song about that or two.
[01:03:03]  I don't start shit, but I can tell you how it ends.
[01:03:08]  Do you handle it differently when your kids are present versus if it's just you alone?
[01:03:12]  No, I just asked them what's, I said, I'm going to pray for you because I have no idea what has you so miserable today or just generally.
[01:03:20]  You look super unhappy and they're like, you know, then they'll say, Trump, alternative.
[01:03:27]  And I'm so sorry.
[01:03:28]  I will pray for you.
[01:03:29]  And I do.
[01:03:29]  And I do learn to pray for them because honestly, what has anybody that miserable?
[01:03:34]  Just hate, you know, that old saying, hate corrodes the container in which it lives.
[01:03:38]  You could just almost feel it from some people.
[01:03:40]  Now, people can have a difference of opinion, but that's not the way they approach it, as you and Stephen know.
[01:03:44]  They can say, listen, I disagree with you.
[01:03:46]  I get that from plenty of people.
[01:03:47]  I disagree with you, but you're really good at what you say.
[01:03:50]  I disagree with what you say, but you're really fluid in what you say.
[01:03:52]  It's not how it goes.
[01:03:54]  And they just, they just think.
[01:03:55]  He's like, I worked at QSAID.
[01:03:58]  And I'm like, okay, thank you for this time.
[01:04:01]  But also, you know, people think they know you and they think they have a right.
[01:04:06]  You know, people think they have a right to your space, to your time.
[01:04:09]  And they also think they have a right to say whatever they want to you because they do at home in front of the TV.
[01:04:14]  But it's, listen, it's been a good lesson.
[01:04:16]  I think my, my, I hope one of the lessons my children have learned from all of it is to treat everyone the same and with respect, not just look the other way.
[01:04:25]  And like when people want to take the time and stop and talk and like, thank you so much.
[01:04:32]  I will pass it on.
[01:04:33]  That's so nice of you.
[01:04:33]  Thank you so much.
[01:04:34]  I always say he loves you too.
[01:04:36]  You know, they tell President Charlotte Lemmy like he loves you too.
[01:04:38]  I promise you he does.
[01:04:40]  And the kids will listen and then we move on to the next thing.
[01:04:43]  But I also, I remember one of them asking one time, like, mom, did you have to give that woman five minutes?
[01:04:48]  She just kept saying the same thing over and over again.
[01:04:50]  I said, you know what?
[01:04:51]  I did.
[01:04:52]  Like she just seemed she wanted to say it and she was shaking a little and she got excited that she's able to tell somebody who maybe can do something about it.
[01:05:00]  Like, yes, I did.
[01:05:01]  It's nothing.
[01:05:02]  So yeah.
[01:05:04]  What's life like for you post, I would say post-White House, post-divorce?
[01:05:09]  What are you up to now?
[01:05:11]  Is there any love on the horizon?
[01:05:13]  Happy, healthy, enjoying my work.
[01:05:17]  The kids are, you know, the kids are very independent, but they're your kids, so they need you.
[01:05:22]  And I feel that 16, 18, 21, these are not magic numbers in my family, and I'm glad for that.
[01:05:28]  When I was growing up, people were 18s, like go off to college, trade school.
[01:05:31]  They get married at 21, have kids at 22, 23.
[01:05:34]  It's very different now.
[01:05:35]  And I love, I love this era of my relationship with my children too, my individual relationships, let alone with them together.
[01:05:43]  We try to travel as a family.
[01:05:44]  I try to do things with them individually.
[01:05:47]  That part I really love.
[01:05:48]  It's so nourishing.
[01:05:49]  And you have to be present to be able to do that.
[01:05:52]  I, you know, can't be in the West Wing at 7.30 in the morning and do that.
[01:05:56]  And so, or 11 o'clock at night.
[01:05:58]  But yes, I'm taking care of myself.
[01:06:03]  The president called me the other night about something.
[01:06:05]  He said, let me just start out.
[01:06:06]  But he does this every time.
[01:06:08]  Let me start out by saying, I don't know what you're doing or what you're doing.
[01:06:11]  Like, what's going on?
[01:06:12]  But you look great.
[01:06:13]  You ought to bottle it up.
[01:06:14]  You look great.
[01:06:15]  So I think I am rested.
[01:06:16]  I am happy.
[01:06:17]  I think I wore on my face a lot of, you know, the stressors of what was happening in my marriage and my family because I didn't understand it.
[01:06:28]  And I'm the problem, you know, I solve problems for a living and I make things happen and you want to be the protector and the supporter and the love generator for the entire family unit.
[01:06:38]  And I really wanted to make that work.
[01:06:40]  I wanted that to be protected and restored.
[01:06:43]  And so, but yes, there is, look, there, I am, I'm content doing very simple things too.
[01:06:52]  My life has had a lot of big highlights in them and I still do that.
[01:06:56]  I travel for work.
[01:06:57]  I travel for fun.
[01:06:59]  But I'm also just happy doing very simple things.
[01:07:04]  And I find a lot of peace and fulfillment in that.
[01:07:07]  If a friend just wants to come over, or we, you know, I call it a night early or we watch a movie, whatever it is, like there's, there's all these big highlights.
[01:07:17]  And I think people almost feel, again, performative.
[01:07:20]  Here's what I'm eating.
[01:07:21]  Here's where I am.
[01:07:21]  Here's it.
[01:07:22]  I remember taking the kids to Greece and we were at the Parthenon and somebody said it's the most photographed thing on Instagram.
[01:07:29]  I'm like, but why?
[01:07:29]  And like, I notice everybody's just taking a picture to say I was here instead of like learning about it.
[01:07:34]  Like listen to the tour guide.
[01:07:36]  And so I'm just, I'm honestly trying to absorb life.
[01:07:39]  And we've had some, you know, the elders in my family, these women who raised me and a couple of other friends' family, extended family, they've passed away in the last couple of years alone.
[01:07:49]  And that's been really hard for my kids.
[01:07:51]  So I try to be there for them, very hard for me, obviously, but very hard for my kids who had been raised around the elders and understand that whole world.
[01:08:00]  And when they come back to my childhood home, I was raised very modestly, but filled with love.
[01:08:05]  And I had abundance in everything that matters most.
[01:08:08]  I didn't know what I didn't know.
[01:08:10]  And my childhood room is now a hallway between the existing rancher where I grew up and the addition that we put on to have a couple extra bedrooms when we visit.
[01:08:20]  So I know they see that and they know that too.
[01:08:22]  So no, my life is very happy and I feel like I do have time for friendship and exercise and I've been dating a guy for a while and he's very special and the president, I've never actually revealed the video, but the president met him and said, calls him handsome stud in front of 800 people.
[01:08:44]  I think you were there.
[01:08:45]  It was very funny.
[01:08:46]  He's like, he's a handsome stud.
[01:08:48]  I hadn't heard that phrase in a while.
[01:08:50]  It's very, very apt.
[01:08:52]  No, he's very good to me and very patient with the fact that I have many, many, my heart is filled for my kids.
[01:09:01]  Where did you meet?
[01:09:03]  So we met at a conference in the south of France.
[01:09:06]  Claudia was with me, but we didn't start dating for a very long time, like a year plus probably, because I was married.
[01:09:16]  I was not fully divorced and I wouldn't have done that.
[01:09:19]  And I think he had girlfriends or something.
[01:09:21]  But in any event, but we, yeah, we just click and we're the same age.
[01:09:28]  And he has, you know, he's learned to love Washington as well.
[01:09:32]  And he, you know, may or may not go into the government.
[01:09:36]  That's his choice and his decision.
[01:09:37]  But those options are there for him, which is great.
[01:09:40]  So yeah, it's been nice to see each other's worlds also.
[01:09:45]  And he has really, I think he's a great example, Katie, of someone who did not know Washington well and was a Wall Street guy and the Miami guy, Miami guy, and grew up in Maryland.
[01:09:59]  But when you see Washington at this age and stage, it's an exciting place.
[01:10:05]  And I hear that all the time from some of the cabinet secretaries and their spouses.
[01:10:09]  Like, wow, I really love Washington.
[01:10:10]  It's so walkable.
[01:10:11]  It's so much fun.
[01:10:11]  The food is unbelievable.
[01:10:13]  The people are nice.
[01:10:14]  It's now safe again.
[01:10:15]  It's now safe again.
[01:10:15]  It is beautiful.
[01:10:16]  I told the president, I probably live in an area with more protesters than people who need, you know, saw the National Guard.
[01:10:23]  I said, but you've made it safe and beautiful and more beautiful for everyone, and especially those in need who are not the protesters.
[01:10:32]  Do you ever take a step back and think of if you were to describe, I would say, your last eight years of your life and be like, holy shit, she did it.
[01:10:40]  Like, how is she so strong?
[01:10:42]  Like, how is that person so strong?
[01:10:43]  When you're like, she was a counselor to the president.
[01:10:45]  She was constantly on TV.
[01:10:47]  She had secret service to you, so it's to protect, you know, her security.
[01:10:51]  She was going through a very public, you know, divorce marriage.
[01:10:55]  Had, you know, was a parent to four kids at the same time.
[01:10:58]  You're like, holy shit, how did I do it?
[01:10:59]  When you actually take a step back through the looking glass?
[01:11:03]  No, because I need to stay humble.
[01:11:06]  And I think as long as you have some sense of humility and gratitude for what you do have and what you have done and a sense of wonder and adventurousness, which I have still, no, I'm really, I guess I'm proud, but I think I'm really pleased and I'm grateful.
[01:11:26]  And I'm mostly grateful to God for seeing me through all of it.
[01:11:28]  I'm most grateful to God for seeing me through all of it.
[01:11:31]  But I'm very grateful to my children and my loved ones also.
[01:11:36]  And look, I'm grateful to George for giving me, which was a loving marriage, and these four wonderful kids.
[01:11:43]  And also sort of the grace and the space to see when things aren't working and have ended in the way that no one, that I had never intended.
[01:11:53]  So, but you know, Katie, I think because of the way I was raised, I will always be that much more in awe of people who do great things every single day and don't realize it and don't get recognized or respected or even acknowledge it to themselves that, you know, I did it with resources.
[01:12:15]  I did it with, I know the president of the United States.
[01:12:17]  I worked for him.
[01:12:18]  I have, you know, I've got resources.
[01:12:22]  I can fall back on things and I'm older.
[01:12:25]  I look at the people.
[01:12:27]  It had to be really hard for people like my mom in the 70s and 80s to be a single mom, even though she had family support.
[01:12:33]  It had to be super hard for my two grandmothers who had true like health injuries that compromised their mobility and never complained about anything.
[01:12:43]  So, no, it's pretty cool.
[01:12:45]  And that's the one thing, I mean, people need to take from this story, not politics, they have to take from the story strength and resilience, not just of me, just of America.
[01:12:56]  We're going to celebrate America 250 next year.
[01:12:58]  And I really hope folks can put aside whatever the this, the, that, and the other is and just applaud the fact that a country this young, you go into museums and churches and around the world and they're hundreds of years older, thousands of years older than our country, and that you appreciate the freedoms that we have and our daughters have that they don't have in other girls and women don't have in other countries.
[01:13:21]  You, you, you just the fruits and the blessings.
[01:13:25]  And so I am very, I'm always very aware of that.
[01:13:28]  And without that, I think I could be bitter or resentful or self-congratulatory.
[01:13:34]  So I think once in a while when one of my children says something that borders on a commendation or an at a girl about the work I've done, it's so much more meaningful to me than almost anything because it means that they saw that and it matters to them.
[01:13:51]  And they think that's cool.
[01:13:52]  I remember asking one of them and I were having a conversation, one of my daughters, not that long ago.
[01:13:59]  And I said, did you ever mind that mommy worked?

=== Meaningful Praise from Children (05:56) ===

[01:14:01]  Would you have preferred?
[01:14:02]  And she said, absolutely not, because that's who you are.
[01:14:04]  And you gave us a great example and you always say it's to support yourself.
[01:14:08]  And, you know, you're there when we need you, etc.
[01:14:11]  And so the answer is not to say, oh, yes, stay at home moms.
[01:14:14]  Answer is to say, that's the choice you made and that's how we know you.
[01:14:17]  Maybe they'll make a different choice.
[01:14:19]  Um, but no, I'm glad.
[01:14:22]  I'm glad that I listen.
[01:14:23]  You don't know what you're made of until you're really tested.
[01:14:26]  That is true, and they've, you know put, put us all through the ringer.
[01:14:30]  All right, so now we're gonna play a lighthearted game.
[01:14:33]  Would you rather we've played this on every single episode of the K Miller podcast okay?
[01:14:38]  Would you rather have a reality show made about your family or a docuseries made about your career?
[01:14:44]  Oh, what's option C?
[01:14:48]  Probably a docuseries about my career, just because I don't want the first one.
[01:14:52]  We already had that yeah, so I would like it.
[01:14:55]  I'd like it to be that, because I'd like people to see the arc of the career.
[01:14:58]  It didn't start when I was 50 in 2017.
[01:15:00]  It started long before that.
[01:15:01]  Would you rather run a campaign for Kanye West or Anthony Weiner?
[01:15:06]  Anthony Weiner and I'd make sure he lost perfect.
[01:15:10]  Would you rather do karaoke night with Sean Spicer or a dance off with Sarah Sanders?
[01:15:14]  Dance off with Sarah Sanders.
[01:15:15]  And I've done it, haven't we.
[01:15:18]  Would you rather do another four years of daily cable news hits from the White House?
[01:15:21]  Or one year running focus groups with nothing but teenagers.
[01:15:26]  That is brilliant.
[01:15:28]  Since I do the latter all the time as a second job, I would say actually, I'm gonna do that.
[01:15:35]  I'm gonna do the focus group with teenagers for a year and I'll tell you why we pick on the kids so much as adults like oh, they're on their phones oh, they don't look at this.
[01:15:42]  It's like, everywhere I turn Katie, adults are on their phones.
[01:15:45]  Their parents and grandparents are on their phones.
[01:15:47]  It's not just the kids.
[01:15:48]  I think there's great wisdom with these kids and I think technology is their native tongue.
[01:15:51]  We can learn a thing or two for them.
[01:15:53]  I'm doing the focus groups.
[01:15:54]  Would you rather moderate a debate between your ex-husband and President Trump, or take art lessons from Hunter Biden?
[01:16:00]  I'm gonna.
[01:16:01]  I don't want to do anything with Hunter Biden, and so I'm gonna moderate a debate between yes, my ex and our current president.
[01:16:10]  I love that.
[01:16:12]  What shows are you binging right now?
[01:16:15]  I'm terrible about watching TV.
[01:16:17]  I watch things late and people make fun of me.
[01:16:18]  They're like, well, you're watching that for the second time right, like breaking bad.
[01:16:21]  I watched last year for the first time.
[01:16:22]  My cousin's like you're doing the third time.
[01:16:23]  I'm like, no, it's my first.
[01:16:25]  I binge watched your friends and neighbors recently with John Hamm.
[01:16:28]  I like that.
[01:16:29]  It's very clever.
[01:16:30]  And I'm trying to binge watch a couple other things.
[01:16:34]  But honestly, it's terrible for me to tell you that I don't watch a lot of TV.
[01:16:39]  What's the last book you've read?
[01:16:41]  The last book I reread was, oh, we probably shouldn't talk about that one.
[01:16:48]  Okay.
[01:16:48]  The last book I read was, believe it or not, Mike Waltz's Hard Truths.
[01:16:53]  When he got the job as national security advisor, it had been sitting on my desk for a long time.
[01:16:58]  There's two on my desk for a long time that I had breezed through and not read enough.
[01:17:01]  One is by Kevin Rudd, who is the ambassador to Australian Ambassador to the U.S., and he talks about China.
[01:17:07]  He's at China.
[01:17:08]  He's a Sino expert, and he talks about the U.S. and China.
[01:17:11]  I had dinner with him recently.
[01:17:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:17:13]  He's a great guy.
[01:17:14]  Familiar.
[01:17:15]  Love the book, actually.
[01:17:16]  It's very prescient and smart.
[01:17:19]  And then the Hard Truths by Mike Waltz, because I wanted to understand, you know, I knew him as a congressman, then I knew him as National Security Advisor.
[01:17:27]  I know him as a father and a husband, but I didn't really, I wanted to see the arc of his career from Green Beret.
[01:17:32]  Like what inspires people who are in the military to then run for office and then do what he's doing.
[01:17:37]  Now he's at the U.N.
[01:17:37]  So those happen to be the two on my nightstand.
[01:17:39]  What's your biggest irrational fear?
[01:17:42]  My biggest irrational fear is fire.
[01:17:48]  What's your daily routine look like?
[01:17:50]  My daily routine is I'm up very early.
[01:17:52]  That comes from having dogs when I was single, whose bladders don't know what time it is, and then they sleep the rest of the day.
[01:17:57]  And then being a mother.
[01:17:59]  So my daily routine is to get up maybe an hour before everyone else, exercise if I can, 20 minutes on the Peloton.
[01:18:05]  I don't have patience for 30, but do that a couple times a week, lift weights once or twice a week, and get breakfast ready for the kids.
[01:18:12]  Read as much as I can.
[01:18:13]  So I read a lot of news before I go to sleep because now you can read Tomorrow's News.
[01:18:17]  Instead of a recap, you're actually getting a preview.
[01:18:20]  And then I tend to read my favorite newspapers, maybe scroll through Twitter, but not as much anymore because I'd rather just go right to the newspapers.
[01:18:31]  And then I do what moms do.
[01:18:34]  I make sure everything is ready, laundry, the dishes, et cetera.
[01:18:39]  And then I start my work.
[01:18:40]  I like to get ahead of that.
[01:18:42]  There are things at night I'm trying to do, and I'm like, I'm a little too tired for that to be as cogent as it needs to be.
[01:18:46]  Let's shelve it till the morning.
[01:18:49]  I like to get ahead of that.
[01:18:51]  And I put on, I learned, I watch business, a lot of business news.
[01:18:56]  I put on Fox News, of course, Fox and Friends, but I watch a lot of Fox Business also because I like to, you know, I really like to learn about that.
[01:19:04]  And then I'm with my kids.
[01:19:05]  You know, I talk to all four of them in the morning.
[01:19:09]  Two of them are there, sometimes three.
[01:19:11]  Do you cook dinner at night?
[01:19:12]  I do.
[01:19:13]  I'm afraid.
[01:19:14]  How much mail you cook?
[01:19:16]  They would say filet mignon, sear it first, then grill it.
[01:19:22]  I think anything Italian is still my best one just because I grew up learning that.
[01:19:26]  You know, chicken parm or homemade meatballs or all of that, lasagna.
[01:19:31]  They also tend to like my salmon.
[01:19:33]  I did that last night before I saw you at dinner.
[01:19:36]  It's like I made dinner and then went out.
[01:19:38]  But yeah, I don't think I'm a great cook, but I'm a consistent cook.
[01:19:42]  I like them to smell it and know it's going to be there and they look for it.
[01:19:45]  Do you believe in gentle parenting or FAFO parenting?
[01:19:49]  You know, that happened to me once with Stephen Colbert like 22 years ago before I was a parent.
[01:19:53]  He was interviewing me for the daily show and he said, if I were Canada, do you think I'd get the MIL foot?

=== Gentle Impact of White House Events (02:30) ===

[01:19:58]  And I didn't know what that was.
[01:20:00]  So you guys could laugh at that again.
[01:20:04]  Neither.
[01:20:05]  I mean, gentle, I can be gentle.
[01:20:08]  The FAFO, no, I don't do that.
[01:20:11]  We have rules and I don't like laziness or disrespect or not just disrespect toward me or toward a parent or toward, but, you know, toward an assignment or toward a teacher or toward someone on social media.
[01:20:27]  Disrespect your own space.
[01:20:29]  So no, I think I've learned to be much more gentle in that.
[01:20:34]  I think teenagers particularly in tweens, they just, there's a lot going on.
[01:20:39]  And if you're not gentle and they don't feel comfortable talking to you, they won't.
[01:20:44]  Favorite White House event?
[01:20:47]  My favorite White House event was the annual, I have two.
[01:20:55]  I think the Easter egg roll was my favorite White House event just because my kids were those ages and they so enjoyed it and we were able to open that up to the world.
[01:21:03]  Like people would call me and say, do you think I can get tickets to the White House egg roll?
[01:21:08]  Like it was the fabric I egged.
[01:21:09]  Do you think I couldn't?
[01:21:11]  Somebody would write me a letter and draw me pictures.
[01:21:13]  I'm seven.
[01:21:14]  I've always wanted to go to, I've always wanted to go there seven.
[01:21:17]  And like to be able to open that up to everyone was exciting to me.
[01:21:21]  My favorite event though was probably when my beloved Philadelphia Eagles did not come last minute for the championship.
[01:21:28]  They had RSVP'd 82 people had cleared their credentials and their information for Secret Service.
[01:21:35]  That's a fact.
[01:21:36]  And then many of them weren't going to come any longer because of a change the NFL made in the rules in the offseason.
[01:21:43]  And so we converted it into a Celebrate America event.
[01:21:45]  So everybody still came.
[01:21:46]  And most of many of the Eagles fans would come and say, we like the Eagles, but we really love the President.
[01:21:50]  We came anyway.
[01:21:52]  And it just turned into like a really terrific event.
[01:21:55]  And I would say probably anything having to do with the military, anything having to do with when we would have, and Stephen would be at many of these, obviously, angel moms and dads.
[01:22:06]  Like, I don't know if you, I want to call them an event, but when we had them in round tables and all, you really feel the impact, the consequence of why you're there and how it does matter who the president is at any given time.
[01:22:20]  Our last question of this episode is: if you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who would be at the table and what are you eating?
[01:22:27]  Alive.

=== Dinner Party with Jesus (02:28) ===

[01:22:28]  Oh, because I would have picked Jesus Christ, my grandmother.
[01:22:31]  Is it dead or alive?
[01:22:31]  Okay, yeah.
[01:22:32]  Oh, dead or alive.
[01:22:32]  Oh, Jesus, definitely.
[01:22:34]  I have questions, and he does too, of me.
[01:22:38]  Jesus Christ, my grandmother, Antoinette.
[01:22:42]  And I'll pick one who, what are we eating?
[01:22:46]  I would say for that, we would eat a whole array of things.
[01:22:52]  I would say the table would be filled.
[01:22:53]  It'd be more like a buffet.
[01:22:54]  It'd have to be more like a buffet.
[01:22:56]  I'm a condiment queen.
[01:22:57]  I love a lot of stuff on tomato sauce, probably.
[01:23:02]  I put it on everything, though.
[01:23:03]  I mean, I put it on everything.
[01:23:05]  I probably have like six, seven condiments on a thing.
[01:23:08]  So, we call it gravy at home because we were Italian.
[01:23:12]  So, yeah, that would be, I would really, I was very close to my grandmother's, but my maternal grandmother helped raise me in the house.
[01:23:19]  And it's when she died, I didn't even cry because we had that kind of relationship where we had said everything I wanted her to the very last moment.
[01:23:28]  Her kidneys were failing, and I called this guy who I'd gone out on a date with, and he was a nephrologist.
[01:23:34]  He was studying to be at the time, and I called him, and he said, Oh, it's so great to hear from you.
[01:23:38]  I'm like, I'm sorry I never called you back.
[01:23:40]  Like last year, a year and a half ago.
[01:23:41]  I said, But my grandma's kidneys are failing.
[01:23:42]  Can you help me?
[01:23:43]  And I was just, I wanted her to.
[01:23:45]  So I had nothing more to say or do then because we had such a beautiful, honest, loving relationship of 32 years.
[01:23:53]  But now that I've been a mom and now that I've been married and now that I'm in my late 50s, I would want to talk to her all over again and get her unbelievable advice.
[01:24:05]  So one of her daughters, my aunt Rita, is still with us.
[01:24:08]  And my cousins, like I said, her other grandchildren are with us.
[01:24:11]  And so, but that would be it.
[01:24:13]  And Jesus, I just, I feel very at peace with being a Roman Catholic, but I'm a flawed one, raising four flawed ones.
[01:24:22]  And I think I would, I actually want to hear directly from the source how we're, you know, if you had the founding fathers here today, they'd say, do you believe the way they're interpreting the Constitution or not?
[01:24:32]  I think I would do the same with Jesus about the Bible and I would do the same about the modern Catholic religion.
[01:24:40]  Thank you for joining.
[01:24:41]  Thank you for having me.
[01:24:43]  Thank you for watching this episode of the Katie Miller podcast.
[01:24:46]  Please don't forget to like, subscribe, follow, share.
[01:24:49]  We're available every single Monday night, 6 p.m. Eastern, where you get your podcast.
[01:24:53]  Thanks so much.
[01:24:54]  Thanks for joining this episode and we'll see you next week.