CNN’s Jake Tapper presses Conway on Trump’s Charlottesville response: Was it ‘perfect?’

CNN host Jake Tapper and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway clashed Sunday over whether President Trump’s response to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., was “perfect.”

Trump last week defended his 2017 comment that there was blame on “both sides” of the violent white supremacist rally that led to the death of one counterprotester, telling reporters on Friday that he handled his response “perfectly.”

{mosads}Trump initially said there were “very fine people on both sides” before condemning hate groups that were present at the rally, including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and neo-Nazi groups. He doubled down Friday in response to former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign launch video, which referenced the Charlottesville rally.

“Was President Trump’s response on Charlottesville perfect?” Tapper asked Conway on Sunday.

“I think it was twisted for many years,” she responded.

.@JakeTapper repeatedly asks WH counselor Kellyanne Conway if President Trump thinks white nationalism is a growing threat around the world, and if she thinks his response on Charlottesville was ‘perfect’ as he says it was. #CNNSotu https://t.co/hetfI07Gq6 pic.twitter.com/xtdd1SfvD5

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) April 28, 2019

Tapper continued to press Conway, noting that former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who nearly left the administration after Charlottesville, “doesn’t think his response was perfect.”

“Gary Cohn stayed in the White House for many months after that,” Conway countered.

“But he almost resigned,” Tapper noted, before again asking, “It’s a very simple question. Yes or No. Was President Trump’s response perfect?”

“President Trump condemned racism, bigotry, evil, violence and then took it many steps further and called out Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, KKK,” Conway explained.

“Was his response perfect?” Tapper pressed.

“That is darn near perfection,” Conway said.

After several more minutes of back-and-forth, Conway ended the discussion by praising Trump’s response. She did not directly respond to Tapper’s question about whether Trump’s response was “perfect,” as the president claimed last week.

“I think anytime a president is willing to condemn people who hate other people based on their race of their religion it’s a great day for America, and that’s what he did,” she said.