President-elect Donald Trump's senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, Wednesday equated a question from a 17-year-old student on how she could "rationalize" working for someone accused of sexual assault to attack ads from Hillary Clinton's camp during the presidential campaign.
"I'm glad that people looked at [those attacks] and said: 'You know what? That's an argument that will not create a single job in my community, not bring back a single of the 70,000 factories that have been closed, will not deter one member of ISIS from doing their bloodletting here or anywhere else in the world,'" Conway said, The Hill reports.
The high school student identified herself as Maaike Laanstra-Corn, the daughter of liberal author and Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn, according to the Hill.
The exchange took place at the American Democracy Conference, sponsored by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics in Washington.
Conway was a keynote speaker at the event, along with Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
Laanstra-Corn said that her Advanced Placement government class was attending the conference.
In her question, the student referenced the 2005 videotape leaked in October featuring Trump making sexually suggestive comments about groping and having sex with married women. Since then, at least a dozen women have come forth to accuse Trump of sexual harassment and other improprieties.
"What you just said was said probably tens of thousands of times during the campaign, on the Internet, on TV incessantly, in paid advertising," Conway said, Politico reports. "All this anti-woman stuff.
"And you know how America's women answered? They gave the would-be first female candidate, I don't know, what was it, 56 percent of the vote, 57?
"To be the first female president and not have women marching on Pennsylvania Avenue or Fifth Avenue in New York by Trump Tower saying, 'We must have the first female president, we must have the first female president,'" Conway said, Politico reports.
"She should have gotten 60 or 62 percent of the female vote. And she did not.
"And part of why she did not is women tired of the same argument and the same thing that you're presenting to me now, even though you're trying to be personally mean about it."
Conway then said that Trump respected that she was rearing school-age children while working for his campaign.
"For you to use sexual assault to try to make news here I think is unfortunate," she told Laanstra-Corn, "but it also doesn't matter because Donald Trump promised he'll be a president of all Americans."