Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, embarked on a round of morning television interviews Wednesday morning following the stunning victory for the Republican nominee, where she touted the campaign’s ability to create a political movement.
“We’re really excited. We saw it coming for a few weeks. I tried to say that on different programs, but I think people had conclusions in search of evidence and somehow believe if everybody said the same thing that somehow it becomes true,” Conway said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked of she was shocked at Trump’s decisive win.
“What we tried to do here was listen to the people and not reflect our own opinions onto them. I think this is a real victory for the people, Joe, the forgotten man and forgotten woman,” she told co-host Joe Scarborough.
Conway said that the people who showed up to Trump’s rallies came out in force to the polls, handing him a major political upset.
“People would say rallies don’t matter. Then they came out by the millions to the polls. I think they really believe he’ll be their voice,” she said, adding that voters’ unhappiness with Obamacare added to Trump’s ability to win the presidency.
She said that the campaign saw Trump’s support “percolating anecdotally” ahead of Election Day.
“In the data we saw the intensity of his voters, And so they’re not just being polite and passive. We knew that they would be there for him on Election Day, and the enthusiasm and the momentum mattered,” she said.
Pollsters failed to predict Trump’s victory, and Conway, who is a pollster herself, and claimed that people were not “modeling the electorate carefully.”
“They’re presuming that past is prologue, if you voted for Democrats in the past, you’re going to do that you’re entire life, and that’s just not the case,” she said.
When asked if Trump will appoint a special prosecutor to go after Hillary Clinton and her email use, Conway would not say.
“I would need to discuss that with him,” she said. “We haven’t discussed that in recent days and I think that it’s all in good time.”
In an appearance on “Fox and Friends,” Conway attributed Trump’s surprise victory in part to “undercover Trump voters.”
“t’s something I’ve been working on since I got here in July, which is that it’s not that they’re embarrassed to say they’re voting for Donald Trump. That may be some people, but what they are is they’re tired of arguing with people in their social circle or their families because normally these people would vote for a Democrat. And indeed, many of them did vote for President Obama twice. Some of them even voted for President Bill Clinton twice,” she said, calling these voters a “small but potent force.”
“I’m a woman, I’m Hispanic, I’m African-American, I’m a union member. I shouldn’t be voting for him, they tell me — I’m a millennial — but darn it, I’m going to vote for him. Why should somebody tell me what to do, how to think, whom to vote for,” she said, describing the “undercover” Trump voter’s thought process.
During an interview on CNN’s “New Day,” Conway disputed the notion that Trump ran on “division.”
“Respectfully, I disagree that he ran on division. He ran on many things. He had a lot of policy proposals that people were hearing and liking,” Conway said. “If you look at the last couple weeks, the divisive negative campaign belonged to Hillary Clinton. I have to tell you, as Donald Trump’s campaign manager, I was mystified — really excited and heartened — but mystified as to why she would go all negative instead of maybe explaining what her answer to Obamacare might be.”
Conway said that Trump will “work with everyone,” and called on people “to come together as Americans.”
She knocked CNN’s coverage of the presidential campaign and said that people who have criticized Trump should “tamp it down.”
“Lay down the verbal firearms, tamp it down and give this guy a chance. Give him a chance as your president-elect like we all did with President Obama, and we all did with President Bill Clinton, et cetera,” Conway said.
CNN’s Alisyn Camerota pressed Conway, asking her if cable news had divisive rhetoric and not Trump.
“No, I didn’t say that,” Conway replied.
Camerota then asked Conway if the call for unity would mean that Trump would not appoint a special prosecutor to go after Clinton.
“I have not discussed that with him,” Conway responded. “But let me repeat that there’s divisiveness all the way around. And I think that throwing at us constantly the ‘isms’ — you know, you can just go back and reflect for a moment on the avalanche, I mean unprecedented deluge of negative criticism that we’ve received here at the Trump campaign and has been laid upon his shoulders.”
