Kellyanne Conway Admits Trump Lost the 2020 Election

Kellyanne Conway speaks on school choice in Washington, DC - Credit: Oliver Contreras/Sipa USA/AP Images
Kellyanne Conway speaks on school choice in Washington, DC - Credit: Oliver Contreras/Sipa USA/AP Images
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Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway admitted in a new book what her former boss hates to hear: that he lost the 2020 presidential election.

“Stuck in a parallel universe, many Trump supporters deluded themselves into thinking that somehow the president would remain in office or be reinstated once gone. Trump was more shocked to lose in 2020, I think, than he was to win in 2016,” Conway writes in her new book Here’s the Deal, according to Politico. “I may have been the first person Donald Trump trusted in his inner circle who told him that he had come up short this time,” she adds.

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Conway, who left the administration in August 2020, criticized those seeking to establish rapport with Trump over this issue.

“The team had failed on November 3, and they failed again afterward,” she writes. “By not confronting the candidate with the grim reality of his situation, that the proof had not surfaced to support the claims, they denied him the evidence he sought and the respect he was due. Instead supplicant after sycophant after showman genuflected in front of the Resolute Desk and promised the president goods they could not deliver.”

Less than a week before his term expired, for instance, Trump welcomed to the White House pillow salesman and election-denier Mike Lindell, who was photographed carrying to the meeting typed notes mentioning “martial law” and the “Insurrection Act.” Around this time, Trump also met with right-wing lawyers John Eastman, who authored a memo instructing then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject Biden electors, and Sidney Powell, who pushed false theories about voting machines. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was urging Trump to have the military “rerun” the election, also had the president’s ear.

Conway also took issue with the Trump campaign raising millions of dollars in the name of election “fraud”, which turned out to be a fruitless and embarrassing venture, as evident by the dozens of failed lawsuits and Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy-laden press conference in the parking lot of Philadelphia’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

“A smooth transition and a focus on the president’s legacy would have served him and the country better,” she writes.

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