Conway: I Told Trump His Off-Script Rants Make Him Sound Like He Expects A Loss

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Kellyanne Conway is doing her best to keep Donald Trump’s campaign message positive in the final days of the 2016 election.

Yet the Republican nominee has offered up a conflicting perspective on his chance of winning in recent public appearances, sometimes blowing off negative poll results as “phony” and other times telling his rally crowds that he’ll consider his presidential run a “waste of time” if he loses.

In a CNN profile out Monday, Trump’s campaign manager described her efforts to get her candidate to keep up a sunny outlook and avoid distracting tangents.

“You and I are in a fight for the next 17 days,” Conway said she told Trump on the campaign plane after he diverted from a planned Saturday speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to threaten lawsuits against the women who have accused him of sexual harassment.

When Trump asked why, Conway said: “Because I know you’re going to win. And that comment you just made sounds like you think you’re going to lose. And we’re going to argue about it until you win.”

According to Conway, Trump replied, “Okay honey. Then we’ll win.”

Yet as Conway herself admitted, she can only do so much to keep Trump on-message.

“People will seriously say, ‘Can’t you delete his Twitter account?'” Conway told CNN.

“I’m not going to take away— it’s not for me to take away a grown man’s Twitter account,” she went on.

Trump has used his account to hype fears that the election results will be “rigged,” attack his accusers as “liars,” and start fights with everyone from a former Miss Universe to the president of Mexico.

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. Ah, Kellyanne is starting her CYA campaign in the hopes that her career doesn’t go down the toilet with her loser boss…

  2. She’s becoming a pretty decent Clinton surrogate over the home stretch.
    I can’t help but think this is intentional on her part----a bit of payback to the Donald.

  3. She hasn’t been fired yet for expressing doubt about His Royal Orangeness?

  4. Avatar for trnc trnc says:

    When Trump asked why,

    A big clue that she is totally making this up.

  5. Avatar for zsak zsak says:

    Trump has said not to pay too much attention to what he said at the debates and Conway has said not to pay attention to his tweets and Pence is always contradicting Trump. Now his off-script rants are supposed to be off limits too. All proof Trump’s words are worthless.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

93 more replies

Participants

Avatar for austin_dave Avatar for anniew Avatar for fgs Avatar for kilgoretrout Avatar for tfistbmpr Avatar for carolg Avatar for daveyjones64 Avatar for sherlock1 Avatar for halloweenjack Avatar for lastroth Avatar for tomj Avatar for exspectator Avatar for dickweed Avatar for reggid Avatar for meta Avatar for clauscph Avatar for lemmitellya Avatar for pmaroneyb Avatar for edhedh Avatar for poster11 Avatar for remy Avatar for dannydorko Avatar for badabingo Avatar for cavenewt

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: