White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller defended presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway's televised pitch to "go buy Ivanka's stuff" as a lighthearted remark and said "people are blowing this thing way out of proportion."
ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Miller about the House Oversight Committee's two leading members requesting the Office of the Government Ethics to review Conway's comments made during a Fox News interview on Thursday and to recommend any appropriate disciplinary action.
"I think that what you have is a situation where you had the president of the United States sticking up for a member of his family," Miller said on "This Week" on Sunday. "And you had a counselor to the president who was making a lighthearted comment in defense of someone who’d been treated very unfairly."
"I think that the media has taken this to a level it does not merit, and I think anyone watching that interview would understand that it was a lighthearted comment made in defense of somebody who had been treated unfairly," Miller added.
During an interview on Fox News on Thursday, Conway responded to reports that some retailers plan to stop carrying Ivanka Trump's clothing line.
"This is just a wonderful line. I own some of it, I fully -- I'm going to give a free commercial here," Conway said. "Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online."
The president has praised his daughter, Ivanka, and blasted one of the retailers, Nordstrom, on Twitter.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer defended the president's tweet during his daily press briefing Wednesday.
"This is a direct attack on his policies and her name, so there's clearly an attempt for him to stand up for her because she's being maligned because they have a problem with his policies," Spicer said.
Stephanopoulos noted that Sears and Kmart have decided to pull Trump's furnishing lines, and asked Miller, "Is that a direct attack on the president's policies, as well?"
"I’m not going make a comment on that. I don’t have any information on it. I do want to say that Sean Spicer, as always, is 100 percent correct and that what he said is true and important. And I agree with it," Miller said.