Inside the Trump-Clinton campaign staffers clash
The presidential campaign that most folks were glad to see end suddenly re-erupted last night at a post-election forum at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard.
“I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” said Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri.
“No you wouldn’t,” said Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.
“Yes,” Palmieri said.
“No you wouldn’t,” said Conway.
“Yes. Yes,” Palmieri said.
“That’s very clear today, no, you wouldn’t respectfully,” said Conway.
Sixteen months of tension boiled over Thursday in a conference room at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Palmieri argued there were some stains on the Trump team’s victory.
“If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant strat – a brilliant tactician, I am glad to have lost,” Palmieri said.
Conway was sitting right across from her.
“Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?” Conway said. “Are you going to look me in the face and tell me that?”
“You did, Kellyanne. You did!” Palmieri responded.
“Oh, and that’s how you lost -- How about, it’s Hillary Clinton? She doesn’t connect with people,” Conway said. “How about they have nothing in common with her? How about you had no economic message?”
Clinton media strategist Mandy Grunwald had this backhanded compliment for team Trump: “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit for the negative campaign you ran,” Grunwald said.
Trump aides, she argued, had flooded the web with fake stories about Clinton.
“Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, she’s you know, just got days to live,” Grunwald said. “She’s going to jail, she’s going to jail any minute now... There was a very impressive gassing of her.”
Conway shrugged off the criticism on “CBS This Morning.”
“Obviously some of these feelings are still raw. I think most people, many people were not prepared for Donald Trump to become the next president of the United States,” Conway said.
This panel was meant to serve as a first draft of campaign history. Apparently history will show that both sides were still nursing some serious grievances three weeks after Election Day.
