Conway asked how she justified Trump and sexual assault allegations

Kellyanne Conway faced a personal question on Wednesday: How, as a woman, she rationalized managing Donald Trump’s campaign given his history of making derogatory comments about sexual assault.

Conway, the first woman to manage a Republican presidential campaign, took questions from audience members after delivering a speech at a UVA-hosted event in D.C., with one person highlighting the notorious 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape. What followed was a measured but icy response.


“Donald Trump has negated claims that he sexually assaulted women but also admitted to a tape where he seemed to be describing sexual assault,” a young woman in the audience said to applause. “How do you rationalize that as a woman and also as his campaign manager?”

The tape, which showed Trump bragging that he could grope women without their consent because of his celebrity, nearly upended the presidential race when it surfaced in October, as dozens of Republicans condemned it and several prominent women in the party forcefully rebuked their nominee. Conway, though, stood by him, while acknowledging that the comments themselves were inappropriate.

On Tuesday, Conway compared the question about the video to what she described as “anti-woman” attack ads employed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and asserted that voters rejected the argument.

“What you just said was said probably tens of thousands of times during the campaign, on the internet, on TV incessantly, in paid advertising,” Conway said. “All this anti-woman stuff. And you know how America’s women answered? They gave the would-be first female candidate, I don’t know, what was it, 56 percent of the vote, 57?”

“To be the first female president and not have women marching on Pennsylvania Avenue or Fifth Avenue in New York by the Trump Tower saying, ‘We must have the first female president, we must have the first female president,’” Conway continued. “She should have gotten 60 or 62 percent of the female vote. And she did not. And part of why she did not is women tired of the same argument and the same thing that you’re presenting to me now, even though you’re trying to be personally mean about it.”

Later, after saying Trump respected that she was raising school-aged children while working for him, she concluded: “For you to use sexual assault to try to make news here I think is unfortunate, but it also doesn't matter because Donald Trump promised he’ll be a president of all Americans.”