Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Friday she expects to play a part in President Donald Trump’s reelection effort but stopped short of committing to a reprisal of her role as campaign manager.
Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign chief for the final months leading up to Election Day, has been widely credited with steadying the president’s uneven campaign and guiding it to an unexpected victory that November. With Trump’s campaign similarly floundering in 2020, the counselor to the president said she expects to be involved in the president’s debate prep as she was in 2016.
Asked whether she would be willing to step in again as campaign manager, Conway replied that "I want to be where my best and highest use is for the president."
"I was also the only woman in the debate prep most of the time,” the counselor to the president said in reference to her tenure with the 2016 Trump campaign. “And I would expect that even if I have to take vacation time, I will be there as well, because that’s going to be must-see TV.”
Trump appointed Conway, a GOP pollster and consultant, as his campaign manager in August 2016, replacing Paul Manafort. She assumed control of the president’s initial White House bid at a perilous moment, seizing the reins amid Trump’s feud with a Gold Star family and reports of Manafort’s ties to Russian-backed Ukrainian politicians.
In the White House, the former campaign manager has continued as one of the president’s most prominent public-facing defenders but has also taken on a policy role, in particular on the issue of opioid abuse.
“I am here at the White House, where the president wants me to be,” Conway said. “I still believe that a president running for reelection, those fortunes rise and fall mostly on what is done where he is, in this building.”
On Wednesday evening, Trump replaced Brad Parscale as campaign manager, promoting deputy campaign manager Bill Stepien into the top job. Parscale will remain with the campaign, overseeing its digital operation as he did in 2016. A spokesman for Trump’s campaign insisted on Thursday that the shakeup did not amount to a demotion for Parscale.
Trump has lagged badly in public polling in recent weeks, trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in both national polls and surveys conducted in battleground states. Conway suggested the president might improve his poll numbers by reprising his daily coronavirus news conferences.
“The president’s numbers were much higher when he was out there briefing everybody on a day-by-day basis about the coronavirus. Just giving people the information,” Conway told Fox, adding that some in the administration disagree with her. “I think the president should be doing that.”
Trump’s once-frequent coronavirus briefings, which sometimes lasted two hours or more, were curtailed in late April following the president’s unfounded speculation that injecting disinfectants could ward off the virus.
Source: politico.com
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