Conway: Pence should have called David Duke 'deplorable' to avoid headlines

Donald Trump's running mate Mike Pence should have called David Duke "deplorable" if for no other reason than to avoid the avalanche of stories about his refusal to do so, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday.

Posed the question on CNN's "New Day," hours after Pence told the same network that he would not use the word to describe the former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Conway responded by tossing up her hands, "He should — sure."


"So that — so that he doesn't get headlines saying, ‘Mike Pence will not say Donald Trump [sic] is deplorable’ and people can get satisfied," Conway said, encouraging people to watch the entire clip of Pence's exchange and thanking the show for playing the extent of his remarks in which the Indiana governor said that the campaign does not want the support of Duke or people like him.

While Hillary Clinton has partially apologized for saying at a fundraiser on Friday that half of Trump's supporters belong in a "basket of deplorables," she's also been quick to still use the "deplorable" line to describe what Trump stokes in some of his supporters. On Monday, her campaign tweeted in response to Pence's interview, "If you won’t say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country."

The other problem, Conway continued in the interview on Tuesday, "is this certain obsession about constantly raising issues and raising people that are not part of our campaign that we have said and Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee has said, that we don't want his support."

"We don't want people like that. It's just, it’s unbelievable," Conway said, going on to ask if Clinton would use the word "deplorable" for imprisoned abortion provider Kermit Gosnell, who was charged with killing three babies who were born alive during the procedure.

"Does she think people saying that, calling cops pigs in a blanket and asking for their death deplorable? I sure do. We can go name after name. I'll sit here between now and Election Day," Conway added, and "we won't get to the tens of millions of people Hillary Clinton was referring to by calling them deplorable. She was referring to hardworking men and women. It wasn't a gaffe. Please, print journalists, be a little responsible, stop calling it a gaffe. She was reading it from prepared remarks as she always does. And she had said it before."