WATCH: Kellyanne Conway doesn't believe Donald Trump's voter fraud claim

Kellyanne Conway self-destructed on MSNBC

Published October 19, 2016 5:02PM (EDT)

Appearing on MSNBC ahead of the third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway imploded.

Right out of the gate, Conway took a stance almost entirely opposite that of her boss when asked if she thought there would be widespread voter fraud on Election Day, as the Republican presidential nominee has recently suggested:

"No, I do not believe that," she told MSNBC's Stephanie Rhule. "Absent overwhelming evidence that there is, it would not be for me to say that there is."

She added, "We know that people who are dead are still on the voter rolls. We know that people are voting a couple of different times in places," she said. "So you do hear reports here and there."

Conway argued that Trump's rhetoric refers to a "larger conspiracy" and "collusion" between "some members of the media" and Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign, as evidenced by recent WikiLeaks email hacks.

Then in defending Trump's often broad and uninformed policy proposals, Conway listed as a counterexample his "five-point plan to defeat Islam." Whether this was a Freudian slip or self-sabotage, it can be assumed that she meant ISIS and, as Trump loves to say, "radical Islamic terror."

ISIS, the radical jihadist group, is not to be confused with Islam, a religion (which is not to be confused with Sikhism, a different religion). It's a not-so-complicated distinction that the Trump campaign has had difficulty making.

Then, Rhule — referring to recent allegations from women who say the Republican presidential nominee sexually assaulted them — told Conway, a mother of four, "You've got to look at your kids when you go home at night."

"Stephanie, that's not fair," Conway responded before Rhule interrupted her.

"I'm not going to let my kids watch the debate tonight," Rhule said. "I don't let my kids watch Donald Trump . . . in fear that he will say to a woman in the audience, You're fat. In fear that he'll make fun of someone with special needs. I don't ever want my kids to say that."

Then, in a dead-on-arrival effort to deflect charges of sexism against Trump, Conway noted the wage gap between men and women employed by the Clinton Foundation.

"She's got a track record, Stephanie, of paying men more than women," Conway said. Asked if the same could be said of Trump: "No. He has said he employs thousands of women."

Unfortunately for the presumably underpaid Conway, The Boston Globe discovered in June that "Donald Trump has paid men on his campaign staff one-third more than women, while Hillary Clinton has compensated men and women equally."

Watch below:


By Brendan Gauthier

Brendan Gauthier is a freelance writer.

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