Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Friday that when she was President Donald Trump's campaign manager, she would not have had to take outside meetings to get negative information about Hillary Clinton, as she herself was "a treasure trove."
"She was like a treasure box of negative Hillary information with arms and legs," Conway told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "We know why she lost. It's obvious. Frankly, when I was campaign manager in those last several months, when I needed negative information about Hillary Clinton I didn't have to go very far."
President Donald Trump's oldest son is under fire for accepting a meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, after he was told through emails that she was an attorney for the Russian government who had negative information about Clinton. The attorney has denied working for the Kremlin, and both she and Trump Jr. said nothing about Clinton was shared during their meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016.
Trump said, during a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron Thursday, that such requests for meetings happen all the time, and Conway agreed.
"In the case of Hillary Clinton, it was all there to see," said Conway, while insisting that she had not accepted any such meetings herself.
"He is absolutely right in terms of people always whispering 'I have got opposition here, or I have got information there," Conway said. "Sometimes people want to aggrandize their own positions or wish to be helpful. Many meetings end up as a bust that aren't particularly meaningful, consequential or helpful and to hear Don Jr. speak of it, that's how he characterizes this particular meeting."
Conway complained that the media is putting too much emphasis on Russia and not enough on Trump's achievements, or to discuss the finer points of the Senate Republican's healthcare bill plans.
"What kind of money are we going to spend by the taxpayers having these infinite investigations, and there are many of them?" said Conway. "If we are going to do that fine, I suppose. But we really need to spend our time, also, telling people what's being done here for them."
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans have been working hard on healthcare, and Vice President Mike Pence has been "our biggest asset on Capitol Hill," and Trump plans to sign the bill into law if it comes to his desk, she pointed out.
"There are protections in there for those who are on Medicaid, and, you know, so far the Democrats, who everybody from Bill Clinton to sitting senators who have admitted that Obamacare has not worked as well as it needed to or as the projection suggested it would be, they have only come to the table with two ideas," said Conway. "What ideas? A bailout for the insurance companies, which is a temporary fix and an entire government takeover of our healthcare system. Neither of those is plausible or supported by the public. They are very unserious in negotiations."
Trump is very involved in getting healthcare reform passed as well, she insisted, and he is "always involved," but it's up to the Senate to get legislation to his desk.