Kellyanne Conway did not have the day off on Sunday, and so Donald Trump’s campaign manager was called into surrogate duty on this morning’s edition of CNN’s “State of the Union.”
There, host Jake Tapper uncomfortably reminded Conway that before she started working for the GOP nominee, she took a dim view of him constantly complaining about rigged elections:
TAPPER: Let’s talk about this idea that everything is rigged. Yesterday, Mr. Trump once again arguing that the election will be rigged ― it’s a charge that he makes with no real evidence to suggest it, that many Republican secretaries of state and others are very upset that he is making. Now, back in April when you were working against Donald Trump, when you were working for Ted Cruz and advising his super PAC, you had some tough words for Mr. Trump when he was lashing out at the time against the system being rigged. Take a listen.
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
CONWAY, on video clip: We hear from the Trump campaign, rules ... the rules change, it’s not fair, the system’s rigged, the system’s corrupt. He can whine and complain all he wants that he didn’t know the rules.
TAPPER: Is this a pattern with Mr. Trump? If he starts losing, he starts lashing out and calling the system corrupt and calling it rigged?
CONWAY: We love watching that clip together. But that was actually about what was happening on the weekends. When Donald Trump would win the vote, he would basically win all the electoral votes in a state, and on the weekends, the Cruz campaign would go back and follow the rules and get back some of those delegates. So no, it’s not a pattern for him.
Conway then attempted to use 2000’s post-Election Day wrangling in Florida as a marker for comparison.
Tapper found the parallel to be inapt: “That’s not the same thing. It’s not the same thing ... there was a state-mandated recount because the margin of error was so small. Donald Trump is out there saying ... the only way he’s going to lose Pennsylvania is if it’s stolen.”
“You can’t compare that to a state-mandated recount,” Tapper said.
