George Conway, a conservative and leading critic of President Donald Trump, has compared the Republican to a fictional mobster when discussing the DC streets takover.
Conway and former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor appeared on MSNBC Wednesday to discuss Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C. Trump placed the D.C. police force under federal control and deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital. Trump has claimed the move was in response to “out of control” crime that is getting worse, though data shows violent crime in D.C. has been declining since it hit a peak in 2023.
In response, Conway compared Trump to Tony Soprano, a fictional crime boss from the TV series The Sopranos. Conway has long criticized Trump and was once married to Kellyanne Conway, who served as an adviser to the president during his first term.
“We don't have Ronald Reagan anymore,” Conway told MSNBC, referring to the former conservative president. “We have Tony Soprano. He's holding people up, threatening them, bullying them, doing things that are beyond his legal power to do. And that scares people.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Conway went on to argue that the president intimidates and threatens his perceived enemies.
“We see the intimidation of people who have had the courage, like Miles [Taylor], to speak out and criticize the president,” Conway said. “There is no limit to how low he will go, and what he will do to intimidate and to threaten and to assert power over things.”
Taylor served as the Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff under Trump’s first administration. In 2018, Taylor penned an anonymous op-ed titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” Taylor wrote that many Trump appointees “have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
Trump signed an executive order in April targeting Taylor, stripping him of his security clearance and ordering the Justice Department to investigate his conduct. At the time, Taylor told The Independent that he predicted Trump might target him. Taylor’s attorneys then sent a letter to inspectors general at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security calling on them to investigate Trump’s executive order.
Taylor described the ordeal as destructive to his personal life.
“This has not been made easy, because once you are on the president's blacklist, all sorts of things in your life start to implode, businesses, relationships, friendships, financial, you have an army of lawyers,” he told MSNBC.
Later in the segment, Conway went on to say he’s concerned about federal involvement in local law enforcement throughout the country. This comes after Trump revealed Wednesday that his actions in D.C. will “serve as a beacon for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other places all over the country.”
“I also think it's important that people understand why it is that this kind of federal overreach is bad, and it's bad because it consolidates power in a federal government. And as Americans, we have never, never wanted that to happen,” Conway said. “We've always had a federal system where local authorities handle local things like crime and safety on the streets, public safety.”
“For the federal government to get involved in that stuff — it's just a prescription for potential abuse, because they can do it all over the country, and there are no checks,” he added. “So that's why we have to really draw the line here and fight back.”
Trump also said he wants to extend the federal takeover of the D.C. police past its 30-day limit, which would require Congressional authorization. Trump said he expects “the Republicans will do it almost unanimously.”
