Kellyanne Conway Reacts in Real Time to Trump Attack, Says ‘Somebody Worked Overtime’ to Turn Him Against Her

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Kellyanne Conway studiously avoids criticizing former President Donald Trump in her new memoir, Here’s the Deal, which was published this week and recounts her time running his extraordinary campaign and serving as senior counselor in his chaotic administration.

On Thursday, that loyalty was not rewarded. Trump issued a statement trashing his most dedicated adviser and dogged defender, invoking her husband George Conway in a missive ripping her claim she told him the obvious back in 2020: that he lost the election.

“Kellyanne Conway never told me that she thought we lost the election,” Trump wrote. “If she had I wouldn’t have dealt with her any longer – she would have been wrong – could go back to her crazy husband.”

“Writing books can make people say some very strange things,” he continued. “I wonder why? Got 12 million more votes than we did the first time, the most votes, by far, of any sitting President. The election was RIGGED. They used Covid to cheat and steal, and the evidence is massive and indisputable.”

That attack came in the middle of my interview with Conway, for this week’s episode of The Interview podcast. We had been discussing the former president’s claim the 2020 election was stolen, and whether Conway saw that as a catalyst for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol carried out by Trump’s supporters.

I read Trump’s statement to Conway. She said Trump had prepared to send out a statement praising her book, but that an adviser must have convinced him to attack her instead.

“I was given a statement last night that he was going to put out — a beautiful statement about the book and our relationship and how hard we had worked together. So somebody worked overtime between last evening and this morning to have him put that statement out.”

She argued Trump was likely being fed negative headlines about the book by people in his orbit:

I think that people have their own interests at hand, including the same people who say privately that Donald Trump lost. And I would love to see his 2020 campaign team out there. I would love to hear from Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner and Tony Fabrizio, John McLaughlin, a whole bunch of them, Bill Stepien. I’d like them to go on the record. I never see them anywhere talking about the 2020 election. So that’s very fascinating. Some of them even say they’re out of politics now. But I saw a beautiful statement that was going to come out some time between last night and this morning, that did not, about the book.

Despite that criticism from the former president, Conway said she would run Trump’s 2024 campaign if he ran and “if he would have me.”

Conway, unlike some former Trump officials, remains a steadfast Trump supporter. She said the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did not prompt her to reconsider her support for Trump.

“Well, it made me sick,” she said. “I didn’t understand it.”

But she declined to say Trump, by relentlessly pushing the myth that the 2020 election was stolen, was to blame for his supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

She did blame Trump’s advisers, however, for encouraging his belief that the election was stolen.

“They feast on this,” she said. “They feast on this continuously with no deliverable. Because it allows them to stay in his orbit, and I find that to be highly regrettable.”

I pressed Conway on why she did not blame Trump for his own rhetoric about the election. While she conceded that Trump is “not a child” and can make his own decisions, she laid the blame for the messy final months of his presidency on chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“It’s highly regrettable that Mark Meadows was the chief of staff for those last eight months in 2020, because he wasn’t up to the task,” she said. “The man did not match the moment or the mission.”

“Beginning with the chief of staff, they let sycophant after supplicant after showman in front of the Resolute Desk shopping their wares,” she continued. “But the president was told by many people he trusted, and he knew to be honest, that he won the election and they were going to do something to keep him behind that Resolute Desk and have his second term. I know as a fact he genuinely believed that, and he based that genuine belief on what he was being told.”

Conway is known as one of the most dedicated defenders of Trump. But a raft of reports on her time in the Trump administration have said she offers a less rosy view of the former president in private. I asked Conway about that, specifically a 2021 Vanity Fair report that she referred to Trump multiple times as “a total fucking misogynist.”

“I’ve never used those words,” she said. “I have never used those words to describe Donald Trump ever.”

She went on to describe Trump as a “very good boss to women,” pointing out she worked alongside Mercedes Schlapp, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Brooke Rollins, and Ivanka Trump, who have 19 children between them.

I also asked Conway about an allegation from former White House aide Cliff Sims that despite her claim she didn’t leak to the press, he witnessed her trashing colleagues to reporters.

“I literally don’t know what he’s talking about,” Conway told me. “I know that in the Cliff Sims book, I was about 1% of his book and about 98% of the coverage of his book, which tells you all you need to know and answer your question.”

We concluded the interview by discussing her relationship with husband George Conway, a conservative lawyer and relentless anti-Trump voice. Their relationship presented a microcosm of the divided political climate of the Trump years, where half the country saw the president as the messiah and the other half considered him an unhinged lunatic.

Kellyanne spoke lovingly of George, as well as their four children. But she questioned, as she does in the book, whether their marriage will last.

“George and I may not survive,” she said. “I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s been very rough.”

Download the full episode here, and subscribe to The Interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Read more coverage of The Interview on Mediaite.