White House counselor Kellyanne Conway speaks in support of Republican congressional candidate Jay Webber at an event in Wayne, N.J., on Oct. 22, 2018. (Seth Wenig/AP) 
 
 President Trump knows Matthew G. Whitaker, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday, two days after the president sought to distance himself from his handpicked acting attorney general. 
 
 “The president does know Matt Whitaker, has gotten to know him over the course of the last year, since he has been the chief of staff to the attorney general,” Conway said on “Fox News Sunday.” 
 
 Trump last week forced Jeff Sessions to resign as attorney general and chose Whitaker, who was then Sessions’s chief of staff, to serve as his interim replacement. In the days since, Whitaker’s background and previous critical statements about the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III have come under intense scrutiny, with Democrats and some Republicans calling for him to recuse himself from oversight of the probe. 
 
 Trump on Friday repeatedly claimed that he did not personally know Whitaker, telling reporters, “I don’t know Whitaker.” That contradicted Trump’s statement last month in a Fox News interview, during which the president said, “I know Matt Whitaker.” 
 
 Conway said Sunday that Trump was trying to make the point Friday that in selecting Whitaker for the acting attorney general job, he wasn’t appointing “a friend there who he’s known his entire life.” 
 
 She added that it wasn’t clear whether Whitaker had been briefed on the Mueller probe. 
 
 “He’s been the chief of staff to a recused attorney general,” she said. 
 
 Trump had been aware before appointing him that Whitaker was a skeptic of the Mueller probe, which factored into the decision to tap him over Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, two White House advisers told The Washington Post. 
 
 Speaking on ABC News’s “This Week,” Conway said the president chose Whitaker because he wanted to “have a continuum” when it comes to people serving in the attorney general role. She added that the Trump administration had been “compliant” with the investigation and that she “can’t really blame” the president “if he doesn’t” meet with Mueller. 
 
 Trump’s legal team in August rejected Mueller’s conditions for a sit-down interview, although Trump said Friday that he has not ruled out an interview with the special counsel. 
 
 Asked about the op-ed co-written by her husband, lawyer George T. Conway III, in which he argued that Whitaker’s appointment was unconstitutional, she said: “Spouses disagree.” 
 
 In an appearance on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) also defended Trump’s appointment of Whitaker, describing the acting attorney general as “legally qualified and otherwise qualified to oversee this investigation.” 
 
 “I’m confident that Mr. Mueller will be allowed to do his job without interference,” Graham said, adding: “You don’t recuse somebody because they have opinions different than the people they’re overseeing.” 
 
 Frances Stead Sellers contributed to this report. ||||| Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning with more of her patented alternative facts. This time, the White House aide was discussing video the administration shared of the interaction between CNN reporter Jim Acosta and a White House press intern who tried to take a mic away from him during a combative exchange with the president, footage experts have confirmed was altered to speed up the motion of Acosta’s arm. 
 
 Host Chris Wallace broached the subject of the now-infamous confrontation first: “I want to ask you about two responses by the White House. First, to tweet a video that was clearly altered to make it look like it was more of a physical confrontation that it really was… And second, to pull Acosta’s pass to get into the White House and to threaten to do that to other reporters.” 
 
 “Well, Chris, first of all,” Conway responded, “What do you mean by edited, or as others are saying, ‘doctored video?’ He either put his hands on her and grabbed the mic back or he did not, and he clearly did.” 
 
 “The video was altered, and there are experts who have looked at it,” Wallace said. 
 
 This is where Conway went into ultimate spin mode. 
 
 “By that do you mean sped up? Oh, well that’s not altered, that’s sped up,” she said. “They do it all the time in sports to see if there’s actually a first down or a touchdown, so I have to disagree with the, I think, overwrought description of this video being doctored as if we put somebody else’s arm in there.” 
 
 There’s a lot to unpack here. First, let’s consult the dictionary for a definition of “altered.” To alter something means “to make different in some particular, as size, style, course, or the like; modify.” Speeding up a video sure seems to fall under that definition. 
 
 Second, sports. It’s blatantly untrue that sports broadcasters speed up footage to show where the ball should be marked or a touchdown. If anything they slow the footage to see it more clearly. But, apparently, in Kellyanne’s world, where up is down, black is white and cats and dogs are besties, sports broadcasts actually speed up plays that they are trying to analyze. 
 
 Third, no one is saying they “put somebody else’s arm” in the video. It’s a strawman argument, one of Conway’s favorite tactics. 
 
 The exchange between Acosta and the intern, fueled by the White Houses’s mischaracterization of the interaction, has become such a cultural talking point it was parodied on Saturday Night Live, with Cecily Strong playing the determined intern trying to take the mic from Weekend Update host Colin Jost.
– Kellyanne Conway may have cleared up whether President Trump knows acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker—after Trump called Whitaker "a great guy" in October, made him acting AG last week, and claimed not to know him Friday, the Washington Post reports. "The president does know Matt Whitaker, has gotten to know him over the course of the last year, since he has been the chief of staff to the attorney general," says Conway on Fox News Sunday. Trump was only emphasizing Friday that Whitaker isn't "a friend there who he's known his entire life," Conway explains. For more around the Sunday dial, including an accusation by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: The Acosta video: "He either put his hands on her and grabbed the mic [from] her or he did not and he clearly did," Conway says of the much-ballyhooed video showing CNN reporter Jim Acosta resisting the mic-grab of an administration intern, per Rolling Stone. "...Well that's not altered. That's sped up. They do it all the time in sports to see if there's actually a first down or a touchdown."