Kellyanne Conway, At Republican Convention, Says Donald Trump “Helped Me Shatter A Barrier In The World Of Politics”

Ted Johnson and Dominic Patten
·2 min read

Kellyanne Conway, the soon-to-depart senior adviser to President Donald Trump, addressed the Republican Convention by praising her boss for putting women in senior leadership positions.

“President Trump helped me shatter a barrier in the world of politics, by empowering me to manage his campaign to successful conclusion,” she said in her speech from the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

He said that Trump “has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government. He confides and consults us, respects our opinions, and insists we are on equal footing with the men.”

Conway is departing the White House at the end of the month to spend more time with her family. Her remarks are a contrast to those of her husband, George Conway, one of the more strident Trump critics on Twitter and a founder of the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project. He, too, is stepping away from his public platform.

Conway and other speakers on Wednesday have tried to soften Trump’s image, as he heads into the fall campaign with a negative approval rating. In so doing, Conway, a frequent TV surrogate for the president, was less combative in her criticism of the media and the Biden campaign. Another White House staffer, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, also spoke, and relayed a moving story about her decision to undergo a preventative mastectomy in 2018 after the discovery of a gene that made her high risk for breast cancer. She talked about how the president called her after her surgery.

“I was blown away. Here was the leader of the free world, caring about my circumstance,” she said. She had yet to join the White House staff at the time.

But she also said that Trump “stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions.” The Trump administration is backing a lawsuit that is seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which provides protects to those with pre-existing conditions.

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