During an off-the-rails interview that consisted primarily of CNN’s Chris Cuomo painstakingly attempting to get White House counselor Kellyanne Conway to answer one question — Did Trump lie about his knowledge of the Michael Cohen payments? — Conway accused CNN of the same crime that the U.S. intelligence community believes Russia committed in 2016: Interference in the election.
Conway accused CNN of not covering anything positive about Trump leading up to the 2016 election and said the network regularly played the “Access Hollywood” tape and covered the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct instead.
“CNN interfered in the election daily,” she said, “by shifting the scales, with your phony polls–”
“Are we a foreign inimical power?” Cuomo asked?
“Excuse me, with people saying he could never win–” she continued.
Cuomo interrupted, telling Conway that the network received criticism for not not covering Trump’s “lying and bad character enough.” Conway then suggested Cuomo had fallen from his peak as a journalist, despite the fact that he launched his own prime time show for the network this summer.
“You were a world class journalist who used to go to plane crash sites and cover war and famine,” she said.
“I go now, too. I was in Helsinki and saw one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Cuomo retorted, referencing Trump’s widely condemned behavior during his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July.
When Conway still refused to answer Cuomo’s question about whether Trump lied when he told reporters on Air Force One that he didn’t know about the Cohen payments, despite appearing to have knowledge of the deal during a recorded phone call with Cohen when the hush payments were being arranged, Cuomo told her she could “go to Fox News” if she wanted to lie. Conway then told Cuomo that he was just jealous of that network’s ratings.
Trump himself admitted to Fox News on Thursday that he knew about the payments “later on.”
Watch a portion of the rowdy interview below:
Conway accuses CNN of interfering in the 2016 election pic.twitter.com/4jhtQ5aXVu
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) August 24, 2018
