Trump campaign manager adamant that 'the race is not over'

Despite slipping poll numbers and mass defections by prominent Republicans in recent weeks, Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway insisted Monday night that “the race is not over.”

“Look, every time somebody tries to apply conventional principles to Donald Trump, they're wrong. Because this is a guy who has defied convention from day one,” she said in an interview Monday night on Fox News’s “Hannity.”


Trump’s campaign has struggled of late, with an array of national polls showing him trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton by anywhere from 5 to 12 percentage points. The former secretary of state’s advantage has grown in recent weeks in the wake of a 2005 tape on which Trump can be heard describing sexually predatory behavior in graphic terms. That tape prompted a wave of Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain, to distance themselves from the GOP nominee.

The Manhattan billionaire has also been weighed down by a wave of accusations of sexual assault by multiple women across many years. Trump has denied all of the allegations and threatened to sue the women after the presidential campaign is over.

Monday night, host Sean Hannity laid out an electoral college path to victory for Trump during his interview with Conway, stipulating that the real estate mogul must “run the table” in swing states in order to win. The path laid out by Hannity left out an electoral vote from Maine, prompting Conway to correct him and note that without the Maine vote, Trump would land at 269 electoral votes and force the House of Representatives to pick the next president.

“Otherwise it’s 269 and then Speaker Paul Ryan decides, I think, who the president would be,” Conway said.

“Yeah, he’d pick Hillary,” Hannity said. “He’d probably pick Hillary.”

“No, he would not,” Conway replied. “He would pick Mr. Trump and Gov. Pence. Yes, Sean.”

Still, Conway said, “we’re not taking our chances” as the campaign plans its final push in swing states across the country. Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence will campaign in Ohio on Tuesday and has a planned stop in Utah, a reliably-red state that has slipped into the toss-up category, later this week. Trump himself will be in Florida on Tuesday for a pair of rallies.

“I believe the people are making up their own mind. They won't be told, just as in the primaries, they won’t be told who can win, how to think, who to vote for, what to believe, the race is over. The race is not over,” Conway said. “Give people their voice and their vote. It is not up to you or me or anybody in Clinton world and certainly not in the mainstream media. The responsibility is to cover the election, not tilt it. It's up to the voters. They deserve to stand in line and express their vote.”