By Sandy Fitzgerald
NEWSMAX
GOP nominee Donald Trump delivered a “masterful performance” at Sunday night’s presidential debate that left Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton “off her game and rattled,” Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway, said Monday.
“He took the case right to Hillary Clinton from the very beginning,” Conway told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “I hear her team really trying to spin the heck out of it last night and this morning as, ‘hey, she came to talk about the issues.’
Clinton, though, was the one to start the combative nature of the events in the first debate with her “diversionary tactics and extraneous moments,” by bringing up topics that moderator Lester Holt had not been talking about and had “nothing to do with the subject matter at hand,” Conway said.
Conway started out Monday’s interview by denying several stories that had come out in the wake of hot-mic tapes of Trump making explicit comments about women, including reports she called “really bad” by NBC that she was leaving the campaign.
She also denied reports that Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, is leaving the ticket, commenting the Indiana governor is on his way to North Carolina on Monday and has a full slate of events.
Finally, she told show host Joe Scarborough that he was “zero for three” when he asked if Republicans would be coming up with an alternative for Trump.
“I think people are looking for excitement and crazy stories,” said Conway. “Tune into the campaign. There’s plenty there. Watch the debate last night. You have lots of fodder.”
In the debate, Conway pointed out, Trump talked about Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails and the fact that she didn’t know that the letter “C” means “confidential” in a document, despite having been a senator, first lady, and secretary of state.
Trump also took her on for her “entire failed record” in Libya, the “Russian reset,” and with ISIS, said Conway, and she does not believe Sunday marked Clinton’s “best night.”
Meanwhile, Trump announced in the debate that if elected, he’d appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s emails, and made an offhand comment that she’d be in jail if he was president.
“That was a quip,” said Conway. “He had already finished his statement. She said something that’s why you’ll never be president. He said you would be in jail. And so that was his answer. As for the special prosecutor, I think that’s Donald Trump channeling the frustration he hears from thousands of voters on the stump every day”
Further, said Conway, it wouldn’t be up to Trump whether Clinton would go to jail.
“She made a snide comment . . . about ‘why you can’t be president,’ and he said she would be in jail,” said Conway. “Whether she goes to jail is not up to Donald Trump. It’s up to whoever adjudicates whatever crime she has or has not committed.”
Meanwhile, several Republicans have pulled their support of Trump after the videotape of his comments about women was released on Friday, but Conway said the Trump campaign would be happy to welcome them back to the fold.
“If they don’t come around and don’t want to support their party’s nominee, that itself is incredible,” said Conway. “How it’s only Donald Trump’s burden is beyond me . . . I want to add my name to the list, of course, of people who among with Melania Trump, felt the comments were offensive and unacceptable and I’m pleased that Donald Trump apologized for them. He did it last night and that matters to people.”