Actually, from the outset, Kellyanne Conway wanted to stop Donald Trump. “He’s extreme, and he’s not a conservative”, she said about the New York businessman when he was dismantling the other 16 Republican counter-parts.
At that time she was still the voice of Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign – Trump’s toughest opponent from within the Republican Party.
Kellyanne Conway has long since become the sharpest media weapon for the president-elect, dubbed the ‘Trump Whisperer” in Washington DC. She is allowed to speak to the public in the universe of the multi-billionaire.
It was the fast mouth of the 49-year-old peroxide blonde that fascinated the riot candidate. Whatever his TV strategists said to complain of their then-boss Cruz, she found a way to defend him. She didn’t just run off the facts quickly, she was well aware of the reality bubble the Republican base voters were living in.
When Ted Cruz left the race, Trump did not hesitate. He quickly reached for the telephone and offered his rival’s PR manager a job. Conway accepted and the chemistry worked perfectly. In August Trump made her his megaphone.
Her two main tasks to win back the women he had frightened with various infamous gaffes, and to paint Hilary Clinton as crooked and corrupt.
She did not disappoint.
When the 8th of November rolled around, she suddenly had become the first woman in U.S. history to lead a presidential campaign. Since then she has been featured on all the front pages.
Trump’s appointments
Over the weekend, Liberals were rubbing their hands. Every appointment looked like an unqualified populist move. While Donald Trump just declared he was debating giving the important post of Secretary of State to his most bitter inner-party adversary, Mitt Romney, she went to social media and then TV.
Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state https://t.co/HDtpjeJTc3
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 24, 2016
In the past, Trump said Romney had severely damaged his election campaign. The two had been fighting with bloody disregard.
“Trump did not build his business, but inherited it”, Romney said in a speech. And he accused him of using subconscious racism. But now things have turned around?
Romney’s appointment as Secretary of State would be a signal from Trump that he wants to get the best people from the ranks of the Republicans, whose establishment he has battled with in the past.
This has led some to question whether Kellyanne Conway is the next Trump-confidant to lose his favour. When the suddenly-so-famous woman was making her want to New York from Washington, she saw MSNBC’s headline: “Trump distances himself from Conway’s Romney comments”.
She called her boss to ask if the headline was right. The answer: No – all good!
A little later, a statement by Trumps press spokeswoman Hope Hicks followed: “Kellyanne asked me if she could go public with her thoughts on this matter. I encouraged her. She has always been an important asset and will continue be”. End of the announcement.
He had even offered her a post in the White House. But then the two decided that she could play a more important role outside – as his ambassador to the US TV, with whom they have worked with over and over again.
What makes Kellyanne Conway so strong?
- She was born in New Jersey in 1967 under the name Kellyanne Elizabeth Fitzpatrick. Her father has Irish roots, her mother has Italian roots. Her parents divorced when she was three years old. She grew up with her mother, grandmother and her two aunts – four Catholic women.
- As a teenager, she earned money at a blueberry farm in New Jersey where she worked eight summers. At the age of 20, she was elected America’s Blueberry Queen. Not quite Trumps Miss Universe League, but something. She later explained, “Everything I’ve learned about life and business has begun on this farm.”
- She is highly educated. She graduated in politics at Trinity College in Washington DC with magna cum laude. Later she studied at Oxford University and finally at the George Washington University of Jura.
- She has been married to New York lawyer George T. Conway III since 2001. The two have four children, including a pair of twins.
- According to “New York Magazine”, she was linked to the late Senator Fred Thompson (Tennessee) before her marriage. The Republican presidential candidate from 2008 (lost in the primaries against Senator John McCain) is better known as an actor. For example, he was featured in the TV series “Law & Order” or alongside Sean Connery in “Hunting for Red October”.
- She founded an opinion research institute, and advised various republican politicians and organizations on women. Among them were Trumps vice-president Mike Pence, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and the weapons lobby NRA.
- She has known Trump for ten years, and met him in 2006, when she lived in one of his skyscrapers. When Trump saw the opinionated Republican on TV, he occasionally called her to ask her questions about political issues. In March 2015 he met them again. At that time, he was planning his presidential candidacy and offered her a position for the first time. She refused. “How would that have looked,” she asked. “That I whisper in his ear in his plane, what should he say to women?”
- She wrote a book entitled “What women really want.” This book is about the role of women and how they influence society in the US.
- Unlike her boss, she is a supporter of an immigration reform that is supposed to provide “illegal immigrants” with a way to citizenship.