White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said President Donald Trump would fire any intern under his purview who acted like the Capitol Hill intern who yelled an obscenity at him last week and only got a one-week suspension.
As Trump visited the Capitol to meet with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) on June 19, Caitlin Marriott yelled out, "Mr. President, f—k you!" Marriott, an intern for Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.), was suspended for a week and had her Capitol travel badge seized.
Conway brought up the saga on "Fox & Friends" after being asked to respond to the news that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would receive Secret Service protection, amid a recent spate of Trump administration members being jeered, harassed or expelled from public places. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao were heckled as they left a Georgetown event.
"I'm sure she's being deified on the left, the socialist left," Conway said of Marriott. "She got a week suspension and still has her job. I talked to the president this morning ... I can promise you on his behalf that if a White House intern here this summer ever said anything like that to an elected official, let alone the president of the United States, the 'F word' followed by the name, harassing elected officials like Leader McConnell and his wife ... I guarantee you that person would be gone immediately."
Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) encouraged people to harass Trump Cabinet members publicly, saying Saturday they should create crowds around them and tell them they're "not welcome."
"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere," Waters said.
Although Conway promised any intern who behaved in such a fashion would be terminated, the White House has taken heat for keeping on employees such as Kelly Sadler, who joked at a meeting last month about Sen. John McCain's (R., Ariz.) opposition to CIA Director Gina Haspel not mattering because he was "dying anyway." Sadler eventually left the White House but not due to the comments, according to people familiar with the situation.
Also, the White House was aware of spousal abuse allegations by former staff secretary Rob Porter and kept him on anyway. Porter eventually resigned when the allegations became public, although he continued to deny them.