For years I’ve been asked ad nauseam,
how do you get more women to vote Republican,
how do you get more women to think they’re conservatives,
I’d say ‘oh you know' and I always get these long-winded answers so I’m gonna come up with 4 M's.
Marriage,
motherhood,
mortgages, mutual funds.
And then they become conservatives.
That’s Kellyanne Conway.
Counselor to the President of the United States.
Long before she graced our television screens with 'alternative facts,'
Conway attended law school at George Washington University in the early 90s.
She worked on the side as an assistant at the 'Wirthlin Group,'
a Republican polling firm headed by Richard Wirthlin,
who was better known as Ronald Reagan’s strategist.
After graduating, Conway realized how much money could be made from advising corporations on how women vote.
At just 28 years-old, she started a polling company of her very own.
She called it “The Polling Company, Incorporated"
Conway worked with prominent GOP candidates
like Dan Quayle,
and Newt Gingrich,
on how to appeal to female voters.
Women invariable go- they gravitate toward the Republican solution,
it is only when you identify it as a Republican solution that they bolt.
Conway continued working her way up as a successful Republican pollster.
We’re joined by Kellyanne Conway.
Republican strategist, Kellyanne Conway.
Kellyanne Conway with me here in New York.
And then the 2016 Presidential election rolled around.
In March 2015, Trump offered Conway a job with his campaign,
Conway declined to work for him because she worried about how the public would perceive their relationship.
She told the Washington Post.
Instead, Conway decided to whisper in a different ear
and that ear belonged to Ted Cruz,
who she first endorsed for the 2016 presidential bid.
Conway continued criticizing Trump on the campaign trail.
But by the time June rolled around, Ted Cruz's campaign was sinking fast
and Conway quickly jumped ship.
It wasn’t long before she decided to join the man that she once said was
You were a Ted Cruz supporter during the primary, and you came out and said, 'I don’t like the personal insults, I don’t like somebody who hurls personal insults,’
And then you came out and said, ‘Donald Trump doesn’t do that.'
Now, you know that’s not true.
Well what I was saying in the context of he doesn’t do it without being attacked first.
I mean, people forget that this man is attacked—
Does that excuse it?
After taking the role of Trump’s campaign advisor,
Conway went back on everything bad she said about her boss.
Like when she called for the release of his tax returns.
It’s completely transparent, Donald Trump’s tax returns aren't, I’d like to see those be transparent.
But it doesn’t seem like she cares about that anymore.
Now you’re in charge of Donald Trump’s campaign, given that, given how you feel, are we going to see Donald Trump’s tax returns soon?
So, now that I’m on the inside, I know something I didn’t know then—
which is he’s under audit and what that means,
and he has said very clearly and I back him up completely,
that when the audit is completed, he will release the tax returns.
Conway has had a rough go since she started her role as White House aide.
She tried defending Trump’s immigration ban by referencing an event that never took place.
But it is very difficult to hear those criticisms from a White House
that has such little regard day in day out for facts, for truth and who can—
That’s not completely fair.
Who calls us 'fake news,’ for stories that they don’t like.
Well, Jake let me just say
we have a
very high respect for the truth and
I can only speak for me and I’m sorry I misspoke,
it wasn’t like I was trying to get people to believe something existed that didn’t.
That’s easy to figure out, even though the network that I was on—
You cited it a couple times before that one interview.
I was—I was misquoting.
She also used her new position to advertise Ivanka Trump’s products,
violating federal ethics rules within her first couple months on the job.
Go buy Ivanka's stuff is what I would tell you.
I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today.
Despite Conway having a record of pivoting,
espousing alternative facts,
and switching sides,
it looks like she’s all in on Trump now.
I endorse the President’s right to fight back
when he is being mercilessly attacked
and when the airwaves are filled with raw sewage about him and his fitness for office.