Thread by @stokel

In the last 45 minutes, Kellyanne Conway has demanded her 15-year-old daughter issue a correction on her TikTok about the sequencing of her covid tests

Claudia Conway is basically the only reputable source of information about the Trump White House at the minute

The videos are also an interesting insight into the way a mother treats her daughter, and don't reflect well on Kellyanne Conway. Anyway, Claudia is live now

Nearly 18,000 people are watching Claudia Conway live on TikTok talking about her recovery from covid, which she got from her mother. The 15-year-old says she wants to donate blood if she gets antibodies. "For a little bit there, I thought I was going to die. My lungs do hurt"

"The thing that worries me most about covid is we don't really know much about it," says Claudia Conway. Also worth pointing out: she got 405 different virtual gifts from viewers during the livestream, which translates into (a small amount of) $$$

Anyway, Claudia's TikTok has been ~a thing~ for a while now, but when you have her mother literally demanding she post a rebuttal/clarification as if it's a media outlet, you know things have kind of stepped up a gear

Also hilariously bad timing for the high-profile journalism-adjacent TikTok star to have dunked on internet culture reporters tracking Claudia Conway's TikTok literally hours before all this

Anyway, if you want some indication of why you should care about this:
- Claudia Conway is single-handedly puncturing the narrative Trump's team are trying to build about his illness
- Her videos are seen an average of 1.6m times each
- 53% of her audience are 18-24

Claudia Conway's grown her follower numbers on TikTok 17% in the last 30 days as she's rebutted the White House narrative around the response to covid-19. She's also got a crazy number of active TikTok users as followers (95%)

She's back live again (at 1:30am local time), and her viewer numbers have risen to 23,000. She's also talking in pig Latin/gibberish, which is the point you start to worry. "If CPS [child protection services] comes and I get sent away, just know I like you guys a little bit."

This is concerning

https://twitter.com/jessjoho/status/1313348751533109248

And her livestream ends again. "I'm ok," she says, holding up a peace sign. I guess I have another chapter for my book canburypress.com/products/tik-t…

Update: Claudia Conway just privated the last two videos of her mother screaming at her - the one Kellyanne Conway demanded she post, clarifying the number and sequencing of her covid tests, remains online

Meanwhile Kellyanne Conway just tweeted this. It is gone 2:15am there

https://twitter.com/KellyannePolls/status/1313361762075500545?s=19

Summed up everything for @businessinsider: the TikTok profile of a 15-year-old teenager is the biggest thorn in the side of the Trump campaign right now businessinsider.com/claudia-conway…

Claudia Conway has posted a link to a Google Doc attacking media coverage of her TikTok

This is also worth reading, on the challenges of a 15-year-old providing newsworthy information and the ethical and emotional challenges involved in reporting that. A lot of it reflects the thought processes I had in my reporting yesterday vox.com/the-goods/2020…