Outgoing White House counselor Kellyanne Conway vouched for President Trump’s commitment to empowering women, another in a long line of speeches meant to improve the incumbent’s troubled standing with female voters ahead of the Nov. 3 elections.
“For decades, he has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government. He confides in and consults us, respects our opinions, and insists that we are on equal footing with the men,” Conway said during her speech Wednesday to the Republican National Convention. “President Trump helped me shatter a barrier in the world of politics by empowering me to manage his campaign to its successful conclusion. With the help of millions of Americans, our team defied the critics, the naysayers, the conventional wisdom — and we won.”
“This is the man I know and the president we need,” Conway added. “He picks the toughest fights and tackles the most complex problems. He has stood by me, and he will stand up for you.”
Conway and several other women who validated Trump’s treatment of women during this week’s Republican convention stand in contrast to the several sexual misconduct allegations brought against him. Most of the accusations surfaced after Trump launched his presidential campaign four years ago. Down the stretch of the president’s 2016 run, an old audio tape was unearthed, during which he bragged about being able to grope women, uninvited, because he was a celebrity.
A Republican pollster by trade, Conway joined Trump’s first presidential campaign at a crucial moment four years ago, as the GOP nominee was reeling. Conway assumed the role of deputy campaign manager and was widely credited with steadying a Trump campaign filled with inexperienced political operatives, guiding the future president’s unlikely victory.
Among Conway’s past clients was Mike Pence, whom Trump tapped as his running mate while the veteran Republican was in the middle of running for reelection as governor of Indiana. Those ties helped Trump and Pence forge an unlikely partnership that carried them to the White House. In her remarks, Conway lauded both the president and Pence as men of compassion and resilience.
“President Trump and Vice President Pence have lifted Americans, provided them with dignity, opportunity, and results,” Conway said. “I have seen firsthand, many times, the president comforting and encouraging a child who has lost a parent, a parent who has lost a child, a worker who lost his job, an adolescent who has lost her way to drugs. ‘Don’t lose hope,’ he has told them, assuring them that they are not alone, and that they matter.”
Despite having advised a super PAC supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016 before joining the Trump campaign, Conway became among the president’s most trusted confidants and capable messengers. She often sat for cable news interviews and sparred with aggressive hosts, exhibiting the sort of loyalty Trump prizes while showing an ability to cast the president’s rhetoric in softer terms.
That is why it might have come as a bit of a surprise when, late last week on the eve of the convention, Conway announced she was leaving the West Wing to focus on her family. Conway’s husband, prominent conservative lawyer George Conway, has been a vocal opponent of Trump, including on Twitter, and was an early founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of Never Trump Republicans dedicated to electing Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
