Kellyanne Conway makes mind-blowing pivot to Benghazi when grilled about Trump Jr.'s Russia meeting

pulse

August 7, 2017 1:31 AM

George Stephanopoulos asked Kellyanne Conway about Donald Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer. Conway responded by invoking Benghazi.

George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC's "This Week," put Kellyanne Conway on the spot Sunday morning when the senior White House adviser tried to change the subject from President Donald Trump's role in crafting a misleading statement about his son's meeting with a Russian lawyer last year.

Stephanopoulos said the White House and Trump's surrogates had given conflicting statements about how involved the president was in responding to initial reports that Donald Trump Jr. met in June 2016 with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Paul Manafort, then the campaign's chairman, and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law who is now a senior adviser, were also at that meeting.

When Stephanopoulos pressed her on the discrepancy in the statements and said the White House "didn't tell the truth," Conway pivoted to the Affordable Care Act.

"Let's talk about telling the truth," Conway said. "Let's talk about a president looking Americans in the eye, who are still suffering eight years later, who were lied to. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."

Conway then shifted to the Obama administration's response to the 2012 attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

"Benghazi happened because of a video," she said. "Go tell the families of those four innocent Americans who were slaughtered in Benghazi that that lie mattered."

"Hold on a second," Stephanopoulos interjected. "You're changing the subject."

"No. No. That is a subject," Conway replied. "Let's talk about credibility that impacts people."

Stephanopoulos said Conway was "going back to President Obama and Hillary Clinton," to which she replied that "those were big lies."

When Stephanopoulos continued grilling her on the different responses offered by the Trump administration about Trump Jr.'s meeting, Conway did not address the question, and she later called the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election "fabricated."