Jason Noble

The Des Moines Register

DES MOINES — President Trump’s opponents have been mean and hypocritical in their criticism while ignoring his real accomplishments since taking office, Kellyanne Conway told a socially conservative crowd on Saturday.

“People aren’t telling you the news,” she said. “They’re giving you the noise.”

Conway, Trump’s senior counselor and one of the most prominent figures in the administration, addressed a crowd of about 900 people at the Family Leadership Summit, an annual gathering organized by the conservative evangelical political activist Bob Vander Plaats.

In an on-stage presentation styled as a conversation with Vander Plaats, Conway cast the president, herself and their supporters as victims of political critics who make ad hominem attacks while dismissing the administration’s public policy efforts.

“I understand that we’re nation of charged opinions and partisan rancor but I do find most of the vitriol comes from people who don’t know and who are very brave on social media — which means they’re not brave at all,” she said.

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Conway was Trump’s campaign manager in the final months of the 2016 election and a frequent presence on cable TV news, where she became known for dogged defenses of Trump’s at times controversial, contradictory or untruthful statements.

Her profile rose further when she was repeatedly parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”

Much of the criticism Conway has faced, she charged from the stage on Saturday, has been explicitly about her gender.

“If you want to disagree on policy — if you disagree on tax reform or health care reform or immigration or you’re for abortion and I’m not — then say that,” Conway said. “Disagree that way, that’s what America is. But so much of the criticism of me is so gender-based.”

Conway said the condemnation of her as a political operative or White House aide has been about “how I look or what I wear or how I speak.”

“It’s really remarkable,” she said, “and it totally undercuts modern feminism.”

The event took place at the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines at the same time and perhaps 100 yards from a convention sponsored by the progressive Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. That event featured U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders — putting arguably the most conservative and most liberal wings of American politics in the same complex at the same time on Saturday.

At one point during their conversation, Vander Plaats asked Conway how national politics could be made more civil — how, in effect, to bridge the divide with the group down the hall.

“Be the bigger person, which I think is exhausting sometimes, but do it,” Conway answered.

While that means not being the first person to engage in rancorous politics, she suggested, it doesn’t mean withdrawing altogether.

“I’m a lot like Donald Trump in that he always calls himself a counterpuncher,” Conway said. “I really never throughout my life have tried to draw first blood, but when attacked you can turn the other cheek or put people in their place.”

More important to achieving civility, Conway said, is focusing on policy rather than politics and ensuring voters have a full and accurate picture of what their leaders are doing.

“As the person in the West Wing who does not say ‘fake news’ and label media people the ‘opposition party’ … my beef, my grievance, is not biased coverage, it’s incomplete coverage,” she said, adding, “Part of becoming civil is making sure people are connected to the relevant information that they need and they deserve.”

Conway held the stage at the Family Leadership Summit for about 40 minutes. From there, she met another slice of Iowa’s GOP electorate at a Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser at the Wakonda Club in Des Moines.

The event was closed to the press and limited to about 50 party donors. Over about 35 minutes, party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in an interview afterward, Conway took questions ranging from Iowa’s 2016 election results to the health care bill to ongoing White House efforts to craft a tax-reform package.

“She voluntarily brought up tax policy and tax reform,” Kaufmann said. “She specifically made the comment today, unprovoked, that they have been working on tax policy for months now. You always look for subtle cues about what they’re thinking and what the inner workings are, and so I think that is definitely a very strong statement on where their priorities are.”

Conway also reprised her criticism of the media coverage the Trump administration has received, telling donors, according to Kaufmann, that the media “reports the bad, but they don’t report the good.”