White House counselor Kellyanne Conway refused Tuesday to confirm the gender of Conan, the dog honored at the White House on Monday because she didn’t want to be accused of a gender-based scandal.
Mrs. Conway lauded Conan — who took part in the raid that killed terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — but reporters began asking her to sort out confusion over Conan’s gender.
After a White House pool reporter referred to Conan as “a very good boy,” an administration official corrected the report, saying Conan was a “very good girl.” However, after that, another official said Conan was a male.
In the White House’s Brady Briefing Room, NBC News’ Hans Nichols asked Mrs. Conway: “Can we just get you to definitively say the sex of Conan the dog?”
“No, I won’t do that,” Mrs. Conway responded.
“You don’t know if it’s a boy or girl?” Mr. Nichols asked.
“No, I won’t do that because then you’ll say that I was talking about somebody’s sex or gender, so I’m not doing that,” Mrs. Conway said.
“Well, it’s just a dog,” Mr. Nichols responded, “Is it a good boy or a good girl?”
“I don’t think we talk about, we don’t talk about sex in the White House briefing room, Hans,” Mrs. Conway replied.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the U.S. Special Operations Command confirmed that Conan is a male dog.
Conan, a Belgian Malinois, was honored with a medal and a plague for his heroics, with President Trump calling him “the ultimate fighter, ultimate everything.”
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
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