Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, is defending her confrontation with Donald Trump advisers at a Harvard University event, saying speaking the truth was more important than appearing to be a gracious loser.
In a column for The Washington Post, Palmieri says she was right in refusing to back down during a heated argument with Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager.
"I could have let it go last week when (she) challenged me to look her in the eye and say she ran a campaign that gave white supremacists a platform," she says in The Post.
"I considered for a split second. I knew you were supposed to be gracious when you come for the post-election forum at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. But I decided this was a year where normal rules don't apply. Speaking the truth was more important.
"'It did. Kellyanne, it did,' I told her. It's just a fact. Trump winning the election doesn't change that. To my mind, his win makes it all the more important that the truth be acknowledged."
Palmieri said she was aware what she might be faced with while appearing with Trump aides.
"The campaign has ended, and we accept that Trump won," she says in her column. "But we are not laying down our principles or abandoning our supporters. That's the frame of mind I brought to Harvard."
Noting that Clinton, who won the popular vote, received more votes for president "than any white man in U.S. history," Palmieri said Trump officials need to "think long and hard about the voters who rejected them."
And she added: "I don't know whether the Trump campaign needed to give a platform to white supremacists to win. But the campaign clearly did, and it had the effect of empowering the white-nationalist movement."
Palmieri writes Trump needs to unite Americans.
"It's the burden of leadership," she writes. "It's the burden of being the president of the United States."
Meanwhile, Conway has blasted Clinton's campaign for not accepting blame for her defeat, according to The Hill.
"Frankly, there's no self-awareness that they lost the election because they missed America," she said. "In Hillary Clinton's world, it's always somebody else's fault."
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