Kellyanne Conway says the media's 'sexism' is worse than Trump's 'sexism

Kellyanne Conway, one of President Donald Trump's key advisers, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" and ABC's "Good Morning America" Friday that Trump treats women in the workplace very well and hit back at critics who claimed that Trump's tweets about Mika Brzezinski's purported facelift were sexist.

During her Fox appearance, Conway accused the media of being more sexist than Trump ever could be:

I have kept my mouth shut under never-ending assaults on me based on my gender. I have kept my mouth shut. I have had to explain to crying children why total strangers, or people who used to pretend they were nice to us, would say the things about their mother based on her gender that has grounding in nothing.

Conway went on to say that Trump has done nothing but help "elevate" women for as long as he was in the real estate business.

"He has been elevating and promoting women at the Trump Corporation, the Trump campaign certainly, the Trump Cabinet, the Trump White House," she said. "This is a man who is doing what he can do on behalf of America's women. As a woman who knows him and works for him, I'm very pleased with how he treats women in this workplace, the White House."

During her appearance on "Good Morning America," Conway defended Trump's decision to speak freely on social media, calling the move a way to "connect directly with Americans":

What Sarah Sanders said yesterday is true: that the president normally does not draw first blood, he is a counter-puncher as he said on the campaign trail. And if you go back and look at what has been said about this president, a lack of policy coverage, there are personal attacks about his physicality, about his fitness for office. He's called a goon, a thug, mentally ill. Talking about dementia, arm-chair psychologists all over television every day. ... It doesn't help the American people to have a president covered in this light, I'm sorry, it's neither productive or patriotic, the toxicity is over the top.

Conway noted that she doesn't necessarily endorse Trump's social media attacks — like the one he launched against Brzezinski and her MSNBC co-host, Joe Scarborough, on Thursday — but endorses "his ability to fight back when he is attacked."

Conway said that the president takes nothing but flak from the media and his opponents.

"There is no good that comes out of people attacking the president's physical and mental states on national television every day to the exclusion of connecting Americans with information that they need," she said.

"Bottom line, I endorse his ability to connect on social media with Americans," she said. "And I endorse, as the first lady has said, him firing back when he is being mercilessly attacked."

Thursday saw the president tweet in response to a segment that aired on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" where Brzezinski and Scarborough questioned how much the president has changed in the last several years.

On Twitter, Trump wrote, "I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!"

Brzezinski and Scarborough on Friday responded to the president's diatribe and said, "President Trump launched personal attacks against us Thursday, but our concerns about his unmoored behavior go far beyond the personal. America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president.”

Their statement continued:

It is disturbing that the president of the United States keeps up his unrelenting assault on women. From his menstruation musings about Megyn Kelly, to his fat-shaming treatment of a former Miss Universe, to his braggadocio claims about grabbing women’s genitalia, the 45th president is setting the poorest of standards for our children.

The tweets remain active on the Trump's verified Twitter page.