“Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt?” Kellyanne Conway says Trump wasn’t mocking reporter’s disability. https://t.co/3LAWwTIME4 — New Day (@NewDay) January 9, 2017

Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway faced a grueling interview today where she was confronted by one of the mogul’s most enduring and controversial political moments.

During Meryl Streep‘s fiery speech against the president-elect at the Golden Globes, she brought up the moment in the 2016 election where Trump seemed to crudely mock the disability of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. Conway was asked about this by CNN’s Chris Cuomo, where he pressed her to explain why Trump couldn’t just admit to what he did, apologize for it, and move on.

When Conway responded “that is not what he did,” Cuomo said Trump can deny mocking Kovaleski’s arthrogryposis as much as he wants, but there’s a great deal of evidence to show he did what he did.

“Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt…,” Conway asked, to which, Cuomo answered “because he’s making a disgusting gesture on video about Serge.”

The two of them continued to spar as Cuomo pointed out Trump’s actions, while Conway continued to insist that the mocking behavior was about Kovaleski “groveling.”

“Why don’t you believe him? Why isn’t it taken at face value?” Conway said in exasperation. “You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart? You want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than what’s in his heart.”

During this interview, Conway made the same argument she made on Fox about how if Streep really had a passion for disabled people, she would’ve talked about the man who was filmed being tortured in Chicago last week. As for Trump, he has chosen to respond to Streep’s slams by doing that thing he does on Twitter.

[Image via screengrab]

— —

>> Follow Ken Meyer (@KenMeyer91) on Twitter

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]