Donald Trump’s newly-minted campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, made clear Monday night that while she doesn’t support personal attacks, she thinks her boss was only hitting back when he accused the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” of having an off-camera romance.
After Trump took to Twitter to slam Mika Brzezinski as “neurotic” and call her the “very insecure long-time girlfriend” of co-host Joe Scarborough, Fox News host Megyn Kelly recounted how Conway had argued Trump doesn’t employ personal attacks.
“Now, you know that’s not true,” Kelly said on her show.
Conway replied that Trump “doesn’t do it without being attacked first,” a well-worn defense Trump himself has used since his campaign’s infancy.
“But does that excuse it? Just today he called Mika Brzezinski neurotic, which is another term, basically, for mentally ill,” the Fox News host responded. “He’s called other female news personalities things like crazy. The man does hurl personal insults.”
“But not unprompted,” Conway said. “I don’t like personal insults, let me make very clear. I don’t like them only because I’m a mother of four young children, I’d be a hypocrite if I liked them. And I actually think he can win on the substance of the issues.”
Kelly didn’t let the veteran GOP pollster off the hook.
“But how is that working so far? Because that stuff about Mika was today,” she said.
“So, he felt like he was being attacked. We have interns monitoring the programs and he felt like –” Conway began.
“With all due respect to my friends over at MSNBC, that show has, like, two viewers,” Kelly interrupted. “Why does he let himself get worked up? So she doesn’t like him. Too bad! Who cares!”
Conway responded that the campaign is “absolutely back in Hillary Clinton’s head” and accused the media of unevenly covering the candidates.
Watch a clip of the interview via YouTube:
