Rachel Maddow destroyed Trump's campaign manager for his racist immigration policy
LatestMaddow, over the course of a lengthy discussion, pressed Conway on issues ranging from the Islamic State to Trump University, but the interview truly picked up during an exchange on the specifics of Trump’s immigration policy.
In the wake of recent promises from Trump to change his tune on immigration, Maddow pressed Conway on whether his statement from December of 2015 that a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” still applied.
Conway waffled a bit, attempting to reconcile that statement with his newest plan (“ban people from entry here from countries that are known exporters of terrorism”) while arguing that the later position clarified the first, rather than contradicted it.
Maddow refused to concede the position, however, and went in for the kill:
I mean, there’s a reason that we keep, again, not moving on from this stuff. This was how—in December, when he made this statement, right, on December 7th it was like every political firework in the country went off all at once, because nobody could believe that somebody who was running for president of this country by promising that if you are of a specific religion, you’re no longer allowed to come here.
…
You’re in a position of trying to defend what he said last week, and not refer to what he said in December, but only one of them can be true.
Conway, rather than answering the question head-on, pulled the common Trump campaign tactic of re-routing the conversation to Hillary Clinton:
Well, Rachel, I have memorized the list of 22 flip-flops that Hillary Clinton has made on policy, and they have nothing to do even with the corrupt Clinton Foundation State Department pay-to-play connection, they have to do with policy.
Maddow was never able to totally nail down Conway on the position, which is revealing enough in itself.
Michael Rosen is a reporter for Fusion based out of Oakland.