Trump allies accuse Kellyanne Conway of aggressively 'undermining' JD Vance

01 August 2024

Before 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump chose far-right Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, some of his allies — including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) — reportedly tried to talk him out of it. Graham, according to reports, believed that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-South Carolina) would have been a much stronger running mate.

Regardless, Trump picked Vance, who has been drawing widespread criticism over his attacks on "childless cat ladies" and "childless Democrats" back in 2021 and 2022. Vance argued that Americans who don't have biological children should be "punished" via higher taxes, and he even went so far as to describe childless Americans as "sociopathic."

Kellyanne Conway is another Trump ally who was reportedly opposed to the Vance pic. And according to the conservative website The Bulwark, the GOP strategist/consultant has been going out of her way to "undermine" Trump's running mate.

The Bulwark's Marc A. Caputo reports, "In interviews with The Bulwark, 20 Trump campaign staffers, allies, confidants, and advisers were quick to shoot down any notion that Trump was turning his back on Vance or was displeased with him amid his rocky rollout. But more than a dozen of those sources volunteered without prompting that they believed Conway, who initially opposed the selection of Vance, was undermining him through leaks to the press expressing doubts about his readiness and the campaign’s vetting."

Conway, according to Caputo, denied the allegations and attacked The Bulwark's sources as "gossip girls" and "ankle biters."

"I'm not anti-Vance. I was pro-Rubio," Conway told The Bulwark.

But one of those sources insists that the undermining of Vance within Trump World is "100 percent from Kellyanne." And a source described by Caputo as a "Trump confidant" told The Bulwark that Donald Trump Jr. — one of Vance's top allies — is "pissed off about it" because "he knows it's her."

Caputo reports, "Donald Trump Jr., who has been close to Vance for years, tirelessly lobbied his father to pick the Ohio senator. Conway was pushing primarily for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and, to a lesser extent, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, the favorite of News Corp. media mogul Rupert Murdoch, as The Bulwark first reported in June. Eventually, Trump World itself split in two — into pro-Vance and anybody-but-Vance camps — with emotions running high toward the end of the VP selection process."

Marc A. Caputo's full report for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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