The Woman of Your 2016 Nightmares Wants Back on Team Trump
Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who coined the phrase “alternative facts,” may soon rejoin Team Trump.
Conway is considering an offer to join Trump’s team again, Axios reported Thursday, citing an anonymous person close to Conway. The source would not specify who had offered her a position or what the role even was.
Senior Trump advisers denied that an offer had been made. But Conway, now a Fox News commentator, has recently been front and center, speaking out about multiple contentious issues, including TikTok, abortion, and race. Many Republicans see this as an attempt to make herself relevant and ingratiate herself to Trump, according to Axios.
There is no denying Conway’s ability to deliver a message. Once Trump was elected, she became one of his primary spokespeople and demonstrated a terrifying skill for spinning reality to try to make it seem more favorable to Trump.
“She is the go-to messenger when it comes to hot-button issues,” one source, speaking anonymously, told Axios. “Anytime she talks about a topic, Republicans and Trump’s orbit take it very seriously.”
But that line to Trump’s ear means that even some people who like her don’t want to publicly associate with her, Axios reported.
In recent months, Conway has tried to help the GOP rebrand on abortion, advocating for a 15-week abortion ban as a compromise. Trump later backed this position.
Conway wrote an essay in The New York Times last month decrying “identity politics” but urging Trump to pick a person of color as his running mate. Trump is reportedly considering Senators Tim Scott and Marco Rubio, and former House and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. He also briefly considered Vivek Ramaswamy.
Conway works for the conservative super PAC Club for Growth, lobbying against the bipartisan bill in Congress to ban TikTok. She recently urged Trump to highlight the app’s usefulness to his supporters, according to Axios. Trump has come out against the bill.
Conway was one of the few people who left Trump’s White House by choice, not because he fired them. She stepped down in 2020 after she and her husband, George Conway, made the country watch their opposing political ideologies battle it out on social media for years. (They divorced last year.) Conway said at the time that her resignation was prompted by a desire to focus on her family.
“In time, I will announce future plans. For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama,” she said, in what may be the cringiest resignation announcement ever.