“My advice to the president privately is my advice to him publicly, which is, ‘If you want to make an announcement, wait until the midterms,’” Catherine Herridge said in an interview Friday with CBS News.
Asked if she thought Trump would announce his candidacy, Conway said, “I wish he had already.” He said he spent time with the former president this week and told Herridge that if he runs, “I’ll be a part of it.”
“That nomination belongs to President Trump to have it, if he wants it, and there’s very little that’s going to stop that, but it’s a very personal choice for him,” Conway said.
That said, Conway understands that even if Trump is the nominee, “there will be others who will be nominees — it won’t be uncontested.”
He told him to watch for Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, to announce her own run for president, though “it’s not even clear that she can win re-election in Wyoming.” Cheney currently appears to be trailing Trump-endorsed primary challenger Harriet Hageman — a recent poll showed her trailing by 22 points.
Conway predicts that “dozens of people” will run if Trump drops out of another presidential campaign, and “very, very few people” if he decides to enter the race. One of the most prominent potential challengers is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Conway gives him this advice: “I would say, ‘Go be an incredible two-term governor, the best two-term governor of Florida in modern times, if not ever,’ and then he can run for president before he’s even 50.” of. .”
He called former Vice President Mike Pence, who he also spent time with this week, a “wild card.”
“This is the guy who was there with President Trump. It didn’t end on the best terms,” he said, adding that for four years they were singing “from the same song sheet,” a “president and vice president who complemented each other’s style, but was essentially united.”
While Pence still touts the Trump administration’s policies, he coyly says the two “may differ in focus.” He suggested this week that Trump’s continued focus on the 2020 election is misplaced. “The election is about the future,” Pence said at a conference in Washington.
Conway also weighed in on the potential impact of the Jan. 6 hearings on Trump. Sure, there will be people who will be “furious” and vote against him, he said, but the hearings might also make him “a bit of a martyr.” As voters, he said, “we protest and pander as a group,” but we vote as individuals, “and we have quite a vested interest in doing that.”
The truism he landed on in 2016 and brought back was that “voters vote according to what affects them, not just what offends them.”
But as for Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, Conway says she’s “not sure what he did” for those 187 minutes when his supporters occupied Capitol Hill before calling them to stop.
Trump often communicated directly with his tens of millions of followers on social media. “I wish he had done it sooner,” Conway said.
He recalled that on January 6, 2021 he called the White House. Conway had quit her job as an adviser to the president a few months earlier to spend more time with her family.
“I’ve called the White House asking them to absolutely talk to people and do more,” he said. “And I’m glad he finally did and told them to go home and take it easy.”
Asked if she was able to reach him, Conway explained how she reached Trump that day.
“Normally I’d call the president on one of his cell phones or usually through the switchboard, so it’s a safe call. I knew the panel was going to take — it was going to take a long time because they’re doing their job,” Conway said.
Instead, “I was calling the cell phone of someone who I knew would be right next to the president. I didn’t even have that cell phone on my phone. I had to call my people who worked with me in my office” for the number, he said.
“I got the call. This person said, ‘Would you like to speak to the president?’ I said, ‘No, I would not like to speak to the president. I’d like him to tell people to get out of there and I’ll call him later.’ I talked to him,” Conway recalled, “later or maybe early the next day.”
She said she knows her message got through to Trump, “and I wasn’t alone.” Others also urged the president to act. “Add my name to the chorus of people who are no doubt running in there burning up the phone lines saying, ‘please get the people out of there.’
Exactly who spoke to Trump during that time is still not fully known. Internal White House records from January 6, 2021 turned over to the House Select Committee show a gap in Trump’s phone records of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the Capitol was attacked, Robert Costa and Bob of CBS News. Woodward reported earlier this year.
Attack on the US Capitol
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