Kellyanne Conway faulted Hillary Clinton for making the election a referendum on racism -- while she said voters instead rejected widely accepted social norms.
"There's divisiveness all the way around," said Conway, Donald Trump's campaign manager.
She said voters chose to decide for themselves whether they cared about Trump's demeaning statements about and actions toward women and non-whites, rather than accept media, academic and political interpretations of his behavior.
"I think just throwing at us constantly the 'isms,' and if you can just go back and reflect for a moment on the avalanche, I mean, the unprecedented deluge of negative criticism that we have received here at the Trump campaign has been laid upon its shoulders -- it truly is unprecedented," Conway said. "You know what? It backfired, by and large, because people ended up saying, 'Stop telling me what's important to me. Stop telling me what to think and whom to vote for, and who's disqualified.'"
She said voters ultimately decided they didn't care about those warnings.
"I mean, look at what the Clinton campaign did for weeks, for months," Conway said. "They were trying to tell people, 'This is what's important to you -- temperament or this comment that many years ago or that comment yesterday, this is the next thing that's important to you.'"
She said those Trump voters deserved to have their views heard and treated with respect, no matter how deplorable they might seem to those who disagree.
"I honestly think, to the whole political elite media class, all of us, nearly all of us privileged people who have a platform, I think the big lesson of yesterday is stop listening so much to each other and start listening to the people," Conway said. "They have fabulous stories to tell, they're good-hearted, and I think we've got a lot more in common in this country than we don't, and you see President-elect Trump making that promise."
"There's divisiveness all the way around," Trump campaign manager @KellyannePolls says. https://t.co/dhhkWMWBBB
— New Day (@NewDay) November 9, 2016
