Kellyanne Conway’s revelation on live television Sunday that she is a victim of sexual assault came as a surprise to CNN viewers.
It also came as a surprise to Conway herself.
“I didn’t make a decision to reveal that; that just sort of happened. I think had I made a decision I would have articulated it better,” Conway, who serves as counselor to President Donald Trump, said Tuesday at the Atlantic Festival in Washington. “But I don’t plan to speak any further about it.”
Conway’s searingly personal comments came over the weekend when she and anchor Jake Tapper were discussing the political edges of Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The allegations also land squarely in the #MeToo moment of cultural reckoning, where women have been steeled to reveal private and harrowing experiences of sexual harassment and assault.
Conway has argued there has been a conflation of that movement to use sexual assault allegations as weapons in political score settling. And that political bent, she said, has led detractors to disregard her experience and personally attack her.
“They don’t want me or someone who works for Donald Trump to have any part of humanity or humility, both of which I possess,” she told Atlantic editor Steve Clemons. “They just don’t, and you know it.”
Conway did not return a request for comment.