Conway on sexual assault – yes, but
White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway said yesterday that she was once a victim of sexual assault, but said women’s shared outrage over such misconduct shouldn’t affect Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
Conway made the comments on CNN’s ‘‘State of the Union’’ while defending Kavanaugh against sexual misconduct allegations. She argued that his opponents were wrongly politicising his nomination and turning it into a ‘‘meeting of the #MeToo movement.’’
Conway said the news media and others often treat victims differently ‘‘based on their politics.’’
‘‘I feel very empathetic, frankly, for victims of sexual assault, sexual harassment and rape.
‘‘I’m a victim of sexual assault,’’ Conway said. But she added: ‘‘I don’t expect Judge Kavanaugh or Jake Tapper or (Republican Sen.) Jeff Flake or anybody to be held responsible for that. You have to be responsible for your own conduct.’’
Conway did not elaborate yesterday on her experience, though she’s previously alluded to her own #MeToo moment. She told a Politico forum last December that during the 2016 presidential campaign she sought to denounce cases of sexual harassment by congressmen against her and others when she was a GOP political operative, but was ignored by the press.
In that talk, Conway referred to an MSNBC appearance she made in October of 2016, a day after the release of an Access Hollywood tape that caught then presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2005 boasting offcamera about groping women. She implied in those comments that members of Congress had behaved inappropriately.