Former counsellor to Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, has said that the president’s legacy “will survive” despite the insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.
Speaking to Bill Maher on Friday, Conway called the January 6 unrest “inexcusable” and said the rioters did not represent most Trump voters.
“I think that those marauders and murderers, I think that they insult, not represent, the whole Trump movement and that 74 million is not a base, it’s a large percentage of this country,” she told Real Time With Bill Maher.
She also said Trump cold point to real policy achievements and criticized the businesses that have distanced themselves from the president since the violence in Washington, DC.
“I know they vote every two to four years, but they consume products and services every day and I think that corporate America make a big mistake trying to lump them all together and just ignore them.”
“But for me, I look at the good that was done to help impact people’s lives positively,” she added.
Conway, quit her post last August saying that she wanted to focus on her children, giving them “less drama, more mama”. It came soon after her daughter, Claudia, 15, tweeted that her mother’s job had “ruined [her] life”.
Her husband, George Conway, has been an outspoken critic of the president and he announced that he would step back from political activism. But he continues to condemn Trump, calling him a “psychopath” this week on MSNBC and saying that would be leaving office “in complete disgrace.”
But Kellyanne Conway defended her former boss and said that the Trump administration had rebuilt the military, presided over a record-breaking economy and killed terrorists.
She told Maher that Trump’s supporters who were “constantly mocked” felt like they had “somebody who was giving them more voice and visibility and if you can match that with policy gains where you do have deregulation and taxes lowered for people where it matters.
“Other people will be just fine and I think his legacy on the policy stuff will survive a lot of this,” she said.
Maher challenged Conway on Trump’s rhetoric, reading out a list of insults that the outgoing president had lobbed at him personally, adding that “he did lie a little more than most presidents.”
Conway did not respond to the claims of Trump’s lies directly, saying that “some politicians exaggerate and some lie.” Regarding her time in the White House, she said she was “happy that I worked for a president who kept the Oval Office door open to many of us. I didn’t win every policy debate but I was heard.”
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