Kellyanne Conway has been serving as Donald Trump’s campaign manager since the latter part of the summer, when the campaign undertook a major shakeup among its senior staff. Since that time, Conway has been not only a chief strategist for the Republican presidential candidate, but also one of the campaign’s primary spokespersons.
Conway was featured in a Fox News interview with its anchor Megyn Kelly. Kelly herself has been caught in the crosshairs of shots made at her by the GOP presidential candidate since she moderated a Republican candidate debate during the primary season. The interview occurred directly after the vice presidential candidate debate at the beginning of October.
During her interview with Kelly, Conway was asked a variety of questions about the debate and the presidential campaign more generally. Questions included a discussion of the gender gap Trump faces with female voters. Kelly pointed out that a recent poll underscored the gender gap between Trump and Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.
In response to the gender gap inquiry, Conway retorted that Clinton should be doing far better. The referenced poll had Clinton at 53% of likely women voters. Conway argued that because Clinton is the first female nominee of a major U.S. political party, she should be doing far better than garnering 53% of women voters.
Kelly quickly pointed out that she was 20 points ahead of Trump when it came to women voters and the most recent poll on the subject. Conway continued to argue that Clinton should be doing even better and that the Democratic nominee’s position in the poll illustrated weakness with Clinton among women voters.
Kelly responded that Trump was at historic lows when it came to women votes, being 20 percentage points behind Clinton. Conway asserted that Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, also has a gender gap. Kelly reminded Conway that Romney’s gender gap with female voters was about half of Trump’s, at 10 percentage points.
Conway asserted that there were 35 days to go before the election and Trump would close the gap. Kelly countered that Trump had the opportunity to do that during and after the first presidential debate. Kelly noted that instead of working to close the gender gap and reach out to women voters, Trump did something entirely different following the debate. He spent his time attacking Miss Universe, making derogatory comments about her looks and repeatedly calling her fat, among other things.
Conway pointed Kelly towards Clinton’s own gender gap among men, which the Fox news anchor noted does exist. Nonetheless, Kelly held Conway’s feet to the fire about the Trump gender gap among women, and the reality that the spread is of historic proportions. In the final analysis, Conway dodged Kelly’s primary point, which was that Trump is aggravating rather then repairing the massive gender gap.