Kellyanne Conway, one of the top women in former President Donald Trump’s administration and his one-time senior counselor, predicted on Tuesday her former boss will likely try to run for the nation’s highest office once again in 2024.
“I think that he would like to run in 2024 because he thinks there's unfinished business,” Conway, 55, said during an appearance on ABC News’ The View. “He sees that Biden is not doing a great job.”
Conway, who left Trump’s White House in August 2020, was on the show to promote her new book “Here’s the Deal,” which discusses her time working for the 45th president. She acknowledged that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 elections, a move many Republican candidates for election will not take for fear of losing the former president’s endorsement.
“I think it's pretty obvious that Joe Biden is the president,” she said. “I can't believe we're still talking about this, respectfully.”
Conway was also highly critical of those who ran the former president’s reelection campaign, saying the strategy during the campaign caused Trump to lose and the subsequent messaging from some of his top advisers – that there were uncounted or false votes in certain states that could turn the election in his favor – fed Trump’s false belief that the election had been stolen.
“I'm the closest person to Donald Trump to tell him the earliest that he came up short. It broke my heart,” she said. “I only wish the people who were in charge of his 2020 campaign, with the $1.4 billion that they wasted, had won outright and overwhelmingly.”
Conway took particular issue with Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s chief of staff from March 2020 until he left office. Conway said Meadows, whose text messages and other communications are being looked into by the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, allowed “supplicant after sycophant after showman to come before the Resolute Desk and promise the president that was the day they were going to find more votes in Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.”
When asked if she would consider running Trump’s 2024 campaign should the offer be extended, Conway demurred, saying: “I have to do what's best and highest-use for my family.”
During her time under Trump, Conway was known for her robust defense of the president in media appearances, at times delivering dizzying rebuttals while once extolling the virtues of “alternative facts” to support her case. Conway was also an informal adviser to the president’s reelection effort but resisted moving over to the campaign.
When she stepped down from her White House role in 2020, the mother of four cited a need to spend time with her four children in a resignation letter. Her husband, George, had become an outspoken Trump critic and her family a subject of Washington’s rumor mill after her daughter, Claudia, posted criticism of her parents on social media channels.
“We disagree about plenty but we are united on what matters most: the kids,” Conway wrote in a statement announcing her resignation. “For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama.”
On Tuesday, Conway said she will “never forgive or forget” the members of the media and the public who targeted her children at that time, saying of her kids: “I'm so proud of (Claudia) and her three siblings. They are resilient. They are hardy. They have more class, dignity, discretion and judgment in their pinkies and a lot of these adults do.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.