Trump campaign manager on sexual assault allegations: "It's not for me to judge what those women believe."https://t.co/h6wSCus2nT
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) October 25, 2016
A top aide to Donald Trump says she will not scrutinize the women accusing the Republican presidential nominee of sexual misconduct.
“Donald Trump has told me and his family and the rest of America now that none of this is true, they’re lies and fabrications, these are all made up,” campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN Tuesday about the 11 women who have accused Trump of past unwanted kissing or touching.
{mosads}“I think that it’s not for me to judge what those women believe. I’ve not talked to them; I’ve talked to him.”
Conway admitted, however, that she was shaken upon hearing Trump uttering lewd remarks about groping women’s genitals in a 2005 video that emerged earlier this month.
“I felt like Rapunzel in the tower all weekend,” she said of the initial days after the “Access Hollywood” audio surfaced.
“I told Mr. Trump in private what I’ve said in public, or a variation thereof. I found the comments to be horrible and indefensible,” Conway said. “He didn’t ask anybody to defend them, by the way.”
Trump’s campaign manager said she never considered abandoning the campaign following the uproar over his past treatment of women.
“I did not,” she responded after host Alisyn Camerota asked if Conway had considered quitting.
Footage leaked earlier this month of Trump speaking crudely with former “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush in 2005. In the audio, Trump bragged about his celebrity, before detailing his failed sexual advances on a married woman and saying he can grope women without consent.
Eleven women have since come forward and accused Trump of kissing or touching them without permission in the past. Trump fiercely denies the claims and has accused the media of fixating on them to boost Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Clinton has built modest leads over Trump in national and state polls since the footage first came to light.
The Democratic nominee leads Trump by about 5 points nationwide two weeks from Election Day, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.