CNN’s “Badass Woman” puff piece about Kellyanne Conway completely misses the point

She’s powerful because she lies. A lot.

To hear CNN tell it, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has outlasted many Trump administration officials because she’s loyal and “relentlessly on message” — positive qualities that warrant her inclusion in the network’s “Badass Women of Washington” series.

But for those of us who still care about facts, Conway is one of the world’s most shameless liars, distinguishing herself with a unique willingness to look into a camera and say anything to protect a president who traffics in misinformation.

It’s not really a matter of interpretation: Conway, who serves as one of the administration’s key spokespeople on television, is a liar and a gaslighter.

During the presidential transition, she falsely denied that anyone involved in the Trump campaign had contacts with Russia, then infamously coined the term “alternative facts” when defending Sean Spicer’s lies about Trump’s inauguration crowd size. Since then, she’s made up whole stories out of thin air — like a fake “Bowling Green massacre” to stoke fears about Muslims, or a fake scandal about Barack Obama bugging Trump using “microwaves” that she concocted in an attempt to justify the president’s baseless claims about wiretapping in Trump Tower. In a shocking moment earlier this week, Conway used a Fox & Friends interview to urge people to read the white nationalist manifesto written by the gunman who allegedly shot up mosques in New Zealand.

Yet next to none of this sordid history made it into CNN’s puff piece. Instead, Conway is portrayed as an almost heroic figure. The network even shared the story, bylined by Dana Bash and Bridget Nolan, on social media with the hashtag #BadassWomenDC.