Kellyanne Conway at UW-Whitewater: ‘If you build it, they do come’

By Kim McDarison 

Donald Trump’s campaign manager during the 2016 election Kellyanne Conway addressed some 200 students and members of the public Wednesday on the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus. 

The event was held in the Timmerman Auditorium, Hyland Hall. The presentation was part of the Robert and Patricia Herbold Lecture Series. 

Conway’s appearance was made possible with support provided by the Republican Party in Jefferson and Walworth counties, along with the Young America’s Foundation, a group associated with former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Conway was hosted on campus by the UW-Whitewater chapter of the Wisconsin College Republicans. 

Conway shared her experiences related to the 2016 campaign as well as her political views, spanning from women’s issues, which she said was a euphemism for abortion, to the recent purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, whom she described as a genius, noting the he would make Twitter “fun again, and free again, and fair again.”  

Though the event began 30 minutes late, Conway was greeted with enthusiasm when she reached the podium. 

She was introduced by John Beauchamp, chairman of the Whitewater campus Republicans, who described America as “deeply divided,” noting that he found it evident with each passing day, that values and ideals shared by conservatives were being met with “an ever-increasing blockage.” 

“We find ourselves shouted down, and shut up, but we will not be silenced,” he said. 

Conway began the program by telling those in attendance that she had taken a call from Trump as she journeyed to campus. 

He asked, “How’s Wisconsin doing?” she said, and “Do they like me there?” 

She next addressed some of Beauchamp’s comments, saying, she, too, while in college had experienced similar blockages when she and a friend sought to establish clubs for both the Democratic and Republican parties on their Washington D.C. campus. 

Conway said when she returned to America after a year studying abroad, she discovered that her campus had no Republican or Democratic clubs. 

“It didn’t make sense to me,” she said, adding, at the time she thought: “There have to be people like me on both sides of the aisle who, in part, chose this college because it’s in Washington D.C. — it’s in the nation’s Capital, where there are internship opportunities and Congressional or Supreme Court opportunities, to go to and witness and absorb.” 

Conway said when she and her friend went to establish their clubs in advance of the 1988 presidential race — her friend, looking to establish the Democratic club, and she, looking to establish the Republican club — she “ran into problems that the college Democrats did not.

“We couldn’t find a single faculty member to be our advisor. And to be recognized by the school, by the college, and to have access to any type of resources — a couple dollars here or there to have an event or maybe some refreshments, or, of course a speaker’s fee, a pot for the speakers — we had nothing like that.” 

Conway noted that a professor, Ira Reed, stepped forward to become the club’s advisor. While the professor was not a Republican, Conway, relating his comments, said: ‘I think that your right to assembly and to speech is much more important than my political beliefs.’ with Conway adding: “And I will always be grateful to him for that because by the time we graduated, a year and a half later, the college Republican club was the largest club on campus.

“And we are right back there a couple of decades later.”  

For Whitewater’s college Republicans, Conway said, the lesson was two-fold: “It tells you that, number one, that if you build it they do come. And it tells you, it really suggests, how many people are open to that message that you don’t even realize in your circle of life.”

Conway said: “Lots of them sound conservative, they just call themselves something else. 

“Number two, it tells you something else; it tells you that all you need to know about why the hard left wants to stop you, and take out your voice box, and make you look the other way when you see injustices against conservatives and free speech,  … They’re afraid … Because you are on the right side of so many issues.”  

Among issues which Conway said Republicans were “on the right side,” were those of “school choice, charter school opportunities, scholarships and educational freedom. And you know what? You know who agrees with you now who maybe three years ago did not? Maybe three years ago they hadn’t thought much about it. Many parents, because for two school years, screen time became school time. And they know better. They know screen time is not school time.”  

Conway said focus groups showed that parents were frustrated. 

“It wasn’t just critical race theory, or masks on little kids, it was actually a larger issue as everybody bought into March to June of 2020 — get off of campus and stay home, try to slow down the spread — but then we had a fairly good summer, and then the next school year they started saying, ‘oh, I’m sorry, you have to start on a new year again.’ And parents knew which political party wanted that and which one did not want that.”

It was a “bright line” distinction, she said. “People are paying attention. You’re on the right side of that,” she added.  

“Critical race theory is a very important issue. We should teach kids to love America not to hate America, and each other; it’s very simple. And of course we shouldn’t have masks on second-graders, outside on the playground, in 2022,” Conway said. 

Conway told students to embrace what she saw as a nationwide and Wisconsin opportunity to spread a Republican message.  

“It’s actually your opportunity because you have something I’ll never have again: a future. You’ve got more of the future than anyone else around.”  

Conway next commented on religious freedom, saying: “And speaking of God, we like him. We want to respect people’s religious freedom, their liberty. I’m very proud to have worked for a president who’s the first president in the history of the U.S. to go to the United Nation’s general assembly in September of 2019 and give a major speech on religious liberty …” 

During that speech, Conway said, Trump called upon all people from large countries, like China, and individual citizens found in public squares, saying: “the first right that each of us has is our right to practice religion freely and as we wish. And that is under attack every single day.”  

Addressing the topic of border security, Conway said: “Do you realize more Americans and Wisconsinites now say that immigration and border security is a more important issue to them than when Donald Trump was the president?”  

She added: “This country has spent billions of dollars over decades to protect the borders and the sovereignties of countries all over the world. Is it so difficult to want to protect our own sovereignty and our own borders? 

“And Donald Trump is right. If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country.” 

Conway talked about deaths in America due to Fentanyl, citing the drug as the leading cause of death in America for people ages 18 to 44. 

She said the former president and first lady, Melania Trump, worked on policies to address that issue. 

“Prevention, education, treatment, recovery, law enforcement, intervention,  the two political parties were always doing one or the other,” she said, adding that the Trumps did them all.  

Trump signed into law in 2018 “the largest single piece of legislation on any one drug crisis in our nation’s history,” Conway said, citing the effort as bipartisan, further noting that “every single Democrat voted for it … You probably never heard that before because it doesn’t fit the narrative.”  

“Now the latest numbers under Joe Biden: 106,000 overdose deaths. It’s just unacceptable, ladies and gentleman,” she continued.  

“When you hear of one death, It affects hundreds of lives. And the government has a lot of resources: time, talent, treasure, we can do better, you deserve better,” she said. 

Conway next said she wanted to talk about Wisconsin. 

In 2016, she said, Trump asked her to be his campaign manager, and after she agreed to take the job, she said, they talked about Wisconsin.

Conway shared the importance in 2016 of Wisconsin as a swing state, noting that her professional career as a pollster enabled her to travel to 50 states doing research. 

“So I respect the central wisdom of the American people,” she said, adding that the American people bring “the best responses,” because “you think about these things everyday; you’re living through them. If we put you in charge and took your representatives out, in Washington, or Madison, I mean if we put you in charge for a couple days, things would look measurably different. We know that.”  

Conway said she advised her candidate of “the blue wall.” 

The term is used by political pundits to describe 18 U.S. states and the District of Columbia that the Democratic Party consistently won in presidential elections between 1992 and 2012

Conway said she told Trump: “I very much believe the blue wall is real. The blue wall of course begins and ends here in Wisconsin.” 

In 2016, she said she told Trump: “Hillary (Clinton) had the benefit of the blue wall. I said, we have to bust through the blue wall, and this is also where I recommended (then) Governor (Mike) Pence or (then) Governor (Scott) Walker as his running mate, because I very much believed that you have to go to the Midwest or the rust belt — the upper Midwest or the rust belt — and find somebody who is known there, who has governed there, who understands the issues there, and put them on the ticket.”  

Conway said she advised the candidate to focus on the 10 or 12 states that the Obama/Biden campaign carried with 50% of the vote, twice, and where Hillary Clinton was, in 2016, “nowhere over 50% and staying there in any legitimate polls.” 

Also important about Wisconsin, she said:  the state elected Republicans down ticket, including a senator and governor, even while Barack Obama was president. 

“That’s the key to this; you’re not allergic to Republicans,” Conway said. 

Conway next described a meeting in a Trump Tower conference room. Trump was not there, she said. 

“Katie Walsh, who was chief of staff to RNC (Republican National Committee) Chairman Reince Priebus at the time, another Wisconsin favorite son, did this big presentation. We had about 30 people around. She said, ‘Kellyanne we just want to give you the benefit of the data and the modeling … She said, I hate to say this … and I know that you’re new to this job, but if I were you, I would consider pulling out of Virginia.’”

She advised instead that the campaign focus on Wisconsin, Conway said. 

“I said: so what’s going on in Wisconsin. I love Wisconsin, but we are way behind there.”  

Conway said Walsh told her that “Wisconsin will always have a big footprint … because the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is from Wisconsin, the chairman of the RNC Reince Priebus is from Wisconsin … Scott Walker’s elected three times in five years and whatnot, and … the most competitive senate seat this year, Ron Johnson’s, — sound familiar? — in 2016, is in Wisconsin. So she said we will always have a footprint there.”  

Conway said she filed the information in her mind, and remembered it when she received several calls from Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who invited the campaign back to Wisconsin during the 2016 election. 

In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin, Conway said. She asked the audience: “What’s the secret sauce?” She answered: “Just showing up. And standing up, and speaking up. And doing what Hillary Clinton didn’t do. She was playing around in Georgia and Arizona and Texas.”  

Said Conway: “The country is divided — I got it, but this country was founded on that, and we’re resilient. We’ll survive that. Democracy will survive, America will survive. The question is how do we make conservatism thrive?”

Her answer: “You do that through policies and ideas; policies not personalities; principles more than politics; ideas more than any one individual. 

“There’s a reason why presidents are term limited. There’s a reason we’re all term limited. 

“These ideas, these principles, we need them to be timeless and survive all of us. And now is really the time that you have people’s attention. They are suffering, they’re angry with the Biden administration. Young people are abandoning it. In the latest poll, it shows his approval rating among young people has gone down 19 points from a year ago. 

“Do you know what that’s called? Causation, not coincidence. Just like when I looked at Kamala Harris’ approval rating and it was 28%.

“She earned it. She earns it everyday.”  

Conway addressed what she said was described in the media as “chaos” in the Trump White House. 

“Chaos, there’s chaos. Chaos in the Trump White House. Here’s our chaos correspondent to tell you more about the chaos in the Trump White House,” she said, asking: Chaos is where? In a tweet? 

“Now there is chaos everywhere you look,” she said.  

“There’s chaos in Ukraine and worse — chaos at the border, chaos at the gas pump, chaos in the grocery store, chaos in the supply chain. Chaos in these increases in crime. (It’s) in major cities, including here in Wisconsin; chaos at the ballot box.” 

She scoffed at those who questioned Trump’s stability. 

Of Biden, she said: “He has a trifecta of negative polling. The country has lost confidence in his competence, completely. Even CNN and the NBC polls show that.”  

She cited his disapproval rating as over 60%. 

Said Conway: “He’s why I think young people are leaving Biden and the Democrats right now. It’s not because their major leaders are all sort of old white people, like Biden and Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton … Apart from the fact that they’re smart, young people call themselves Independents more than Republicans or Democrats. So what does it mean to be Independent? It means you don’t really trust politicians and the government. Everyone’s part of the problem and not the solution.”

Conway said those identifying as Independent, in her opinion, are looking for options. Independents, she said, are “open to hearing about ideas.” 

Looking at the mental health of the American people, she said, people are struggling.  

“We know why that happened. To say nothing of life interrupted with academic progress and careers and of course there was a poll released this week saying that all the financial burdens now have prevented young people from doing a lot of the things they want to do — that they freely want to choose to do. Buy their first home, or condo, and maybe go to graduate school, maybe saving or investing, and it’s all because of this; it’s all because of this. 

“And it will be better because you are better. You deserve better, and now’s the chance for you to bring this message to some of the other people who are truly open to it.” 

Looking at opportunities for messaging, she said: “The genius Elon Musk bought Twitter. Which means Twitter will be fun again, and free again, and fair again. And I know a thing or two about Twitter. I know a thing or two — two major men in my life love to tweet. Which means I don’t.” 

Conway said she was asked on many occasions to stop Trump from tweeting.  

“They told me this during the campaign, they told me this during transition, they told me while he was president, they told me when he wasn’t president,” she said, adding that recently Trump had not been tweeting. 

Conway said she developed what she called “a standard response”: “He needs to tweet like we need to eat. It’s just about better choices.” 

When asked by the then-president if she liked his tweets, Conway said she responded by admitting that not all of his tweets were her favorites, but, she said: “here are the ones that I do like. I like when you tell America what’s happening, what are you considering today, what you’re working on, where you’re going to travel next, what head of state is coming, what issues you’re going to tackle next month, next week.”  

She added: “Donald Trump did something transformative with a United States presidency … The president transformed information for you. I call it the democratization of information. Every single person in this room, in this country, in the world, had immediate and free-of-charge access to a presidential communication. Imagine that. Do you deserve anything less than that?”

She described the former president’s tweeting as “Transparency … really, just terrifically done.”

Among other issues, Conway addressed her ideas about abortion, asking those in the audience to ask those whom they knew who are pro-choice this question: Could they name “a single abortion that you think is a bad idea?” 

She offered the advice as a conversation starter to find common ground and share ideas. 

As she concluded her presentation, Conway, again, addressed the college students present. She said while there is talk about angry youth in America, she does not see angry youth. 

“I think you are spectacular. I’m very happy that our future is in your hands. America first is right because it means freedom,” she said.