In her usual passionate defense of Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway blurted out the truth they've been trying to run from all along.
The presidential advisor appeared on GMA earlier this morning and got into a heated debate over James Comey's Sunday night interview with host George Stephanopoulos.
"This guy [Comey] swung an election," she told George Stephanopoulos. “He thought the wrong person would win.”
Thank you for saying so because that is the truth.
On October 28th 2016 just days before the general election James Comey send the letter to congress telling them they had reopened the Hillary Clinton email investigation. This sent shock-waves throughout the media and throughout the country.
Donald Trump and his surrogates immediately seized on this information and incessantly used it on the stump and throughout the media.
As FiveThirtyEight writes, "The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election."
Princeton Election Consortium writes, "However, the big change does coincide well with the release of the Comey letter. Opinion swung toward Trump by 4 percentage points, and about half of this was a lasting change. This was larger than the victory margin in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin. Many factors went into this year’s Presidental race, but on the home stretch, Comey’s letter appears to have been a critical factor in the home stretch."
Both Trump and Clinton campaign pollsters Joel Joel Benenson and Tony Fabrizio described what happened after the letter was released and how it helped Trump win.
“Ours were coming back after the third debate,” Benenson said of the Clinton defectors. “We had actually solidified our lead for a period of days after that debate. Comey happens on that Friday, eleven days out, and that’s when we see—our defectors leave, their defectors get loyal and that keeps moving and probably in the end tips the balance.”
Fabrizio completely agreed with him and said if one didn’t understand the polling fluctuations, “you’d think the bottom fell out.”
UPDATE (Frances Langum): She's already trying to walk it back.
Please note, she didn't roll her eyes.
And our colleague Jamie points out...
