Donald Trump’s current campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, visited with Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning to chat on a number of subjects. First, the pair discussed Trump’s continuous stream of false claims about the Iraq war, which popped up during Matt Lauer’s horrendous moderation of NBC’s Commander-In-Chief forum. Trump’s telling anyone who will listen that he opposed the war even though his claim has been disproven, and Rose even replayed audio from the Howard Stern interview where he expressed support for the invasion.
Rose asked Conway why Trump claims to have always been against the war, and she stated that “He was a private citizen who was against the Iraq war,” and if he was a senator at the time, he’d have definitely voted against the invasion. When Rose pressed about why Conway believes this, she replied, “Because he said so.” Conway tried to switch subjects to Hillary Clinton, but Rose asked why Trump won’t acknowledge his shifting view: “Why can’t he simply say that? At one point I was, and then I changed my mind.”
At that point, Conway invoked “other public statements” that Trump made on Iraq, which refers to the Esquire magazine interview that Trump’s been invoking as proof that he always opposed the war. One problem exists — the 2004 interview took place after the war’s March 2003 starting point. And Esquire is so irritated with Trump’s maneuvers that they’ve nullified his timeline by adding an Editor’s Note “because Donald Trump won’t stop lying.”
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Conway performed more acrobatics for the rest of the Rose talk. She insisted that Trump and Mike Pence’s effusive praise of Vladimir Putin isn’t what it looks like: “He’s not praising him so much as saying we’ll work with people — anybody who wants to help — help stop the advance of ISIS will be welcome in the Trump-Pence administration to do so.” She also insisted Trump had no idea he was going to appear on Kremlin controlled TV while speaking with Larry King. He only thought this was a podcast, which is a sad excuse.
Trump’s either lying, or he didn’t bother vetting where his interview would appear. Conway tried to assure Rose that Trump was simply doing “a favor” for his “personal friend,” Larry King. This would be a good time to remind the world that Trump once accused King — in the middle of a CNN interview — of having abysmally bad breath. He could have tossed the guy some mouthwash or been a little more subtle, but nah.
