Conway to CNN's Cuomo: Trump is not sheltering Russia 'and don’t you say that again'

Kellyanne Conway, the incoming counselor to President-elect Donald Trump, took exception Friday morning to the assertion of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo that her boss is “sheltering Russia” by refusing to concede that the Kremlin was behind election-year cyberattacks against U.S. political targets.

“He’s not sheltering Russia, and don’t you say that again. He’s not sheltering Russia,” Conway shot back. “What the heck has the current president done vis-a-vis Russia for the last eight years to make you proud? Name it. Tell me.”


That exchange came amid a contentious interview between Cuomo and Conway on CNN’s “New Day” in which the anchor attempted to corner Trump’s former campaign manager on the president-elect’s unwillingness to accept the conclusions of the intelligence community he will take control of later this month. Conway contended that Trump and his team are “against any foreign government hacking or interfering with the United States” but that the intense focus on the cyberattacks is the work of “those out there who are trying to delegitimize his presidency, review the election results and you know it.”

Conway said that there is no evidence that Russian interference played any role in Trump’s surprise victory and suggested that there is an agenda on the part of some media, CNN included, to attribute the win to anything other than the president-elect’s successful campaign and his connection with the American people.

“I think you want your viewers to believe that the election results, it all came down to 70,000-plus few votes in three states. It came down to so much more than that,” she told Cuomo. “Remember, the moment you mention Russian hacking and the election in the same sentence, you know what the impression is for a lot of the viewers out there. You know what’s afoot here.”

When Cuomo suggested that it was “troubling” that Trump might ignore the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia did indeed launch cyberattacks against American political targets, Conway responded, “No, it’s not. Really, you're making conclusions up now.”

Trump is scheduled to be briefed on Friday by the heads of multiple intelligence agencies on Russia’s cyberattacks, activity that he has thus far been unwilling to pin on the Kremlin despite the assessment of 17 federal intelligence agencies to the contrary.

His briefing will cap a week in which he devoted significant time to casting doubt upon the intelligence community and its conclusions, at times siding with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who said he did not receive any hacked emails from a foreign state, and derisively placing the word “intelligence” in quotation marks in multiple posts to his Twitter account.

Ultimately, Conway said, whether or not Russia was in fact to blame for the cyberattacks will not matter in light of Trump’s Election Day victory.

“I don't want to relitigate the election, because we won,” she said as Cuomo tried to talk over her. “No, I don’t want to relitigate the election. We won, and that says a lot. That finishes many sentences.”