Screenshot via CNN

Kellyanne Conway had a big task on Sunday, making a variety of creative excuses for the rage-addled Oompa Loompa whose campaign she manages. During a post-debate interview with CNN, Conway insisted that Trump can’t possibly be a serial sexual assaulter of women, since he has never grabbed her personal pussy.


Dana Bash asked Conway to tell her, “truthfully,” what her reaction was to the Pussygate tape. Conway replied that she, like Melania Trump, thought the language on it was “offensive and disgusting,” adding, “I’m very happy that he apologized.”

But, she added, if he was a sexual assaulter, wouldn’t he do it all the time, including to his campaign manager? Hmm? On the contrary, she said:

“I have to assess people based on what I see in totem. And this is a man that I’ve been alone with many times who’s never been anything but gracious and gentleman and elevated me to the top level of his campaign the way he’s elevated women in the Trump organization because he respects women,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash after the presidential debate.


It almost seems like what we’re dealing with here is a faulty understanding of sexual victimization and assault. Earlier in the day, talking to Megyn Kelly of Fox News, she added that unnamed men in Congress are sexual predators. Via The Hill:

“There are members of Congress, current and former, who have rubbed up against women and who have put their tongues in their mouths uninvited,” Conway told Megyn Kelly on Fox News. “Maybe when I was younger and prettier, that may have happened to me.”

That is probably not untrue, but again, it’s somewhat unrelated to the tape where your boss brags about grabbing women’s pussies. Conway is now complaining that CNN quoted her out of context by noting that she’d said the thing about Trump never sexually assaulting her:


This shit makes me so tired. Here’s the full CNN interview.