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Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway schooled a college student during a Harvard University event this Tuesday.

Conway reportedly appeared at the school for a discussion about President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. During a Q&A, a second-year Master of Public Policy student named Jane Peterson tried to slam Conway over her “alternative facts” remarks from 2017.

Watch:

“I wanted to ask … a question about your job as a White House spokesperson,” Peterson began. “In that role, you said things that were often pretty audacious, often caused people to question things that they have seen with their own eyes.”

“I was always wondering whether it was a survival response in what seemed like was a very chaotic White House or was it a strategy? So was it strategy or was it survival? You know, all the bantering with journalists, the alternative facts? Was it strategy or was it survival?” she added.

Conway responded by asking her if she knew what she’d meant by “alternative facts.”

“Do you know what ‘alternative facts’ meant?” she asked.

“I’m aware,” Peterson replied.

“Can you please explain it for us,” Conway prodded. “Tell the person who uttered it on her third Sunday show that day looking into a blank camera and then immediately said what I meant.”

“Well, we can also do other examples,” Peterson replied.

“No, no, you can answer the question though,” Conway pushed back. “You have to be fair. You’re not going to go back eight years and do that.”

“Well, I asked you a question about your role,” Peterson responded.

“No, you gave me two choices, and they’re both inaccurate,” Conway replied.

“So alternative facts, I’m assuming, are …,” Peterson then said in an attempt to finally answer Conway’s question.

“Oh, you’re assuming?” Conway said, cutting her off. “Go ahead.”

“So it’s interesting that you decide to come here and know that you’re going to be accepting questions from students, and yet …,” Peterson replied before being cut off again.

“So then I’ll answer it, thank you for your question,” Conway said. “I gave you a good chance there, and it’s a great chance for you because I don’t need any more airtime because I get plenty of it.”

“So I think your choices was survivor’s response — that’s rich since you know nothing about me — or strategy. How about, my job was counselor to the president. I said no to the press secretary 42 minutes after President Trump was elected. He said, ‘You’d be great at that job.’ I said, ‘I would be terrible at that, I’m not even sure what they do,’” she added.

“Some days I’m still not sure, and clearly I’m not sure after these four years,” she continued, taking a shot at the Biden-Harris administration’s lies, such as the claim that they’ve secured the border and the claim that President Joe Biden is perfectly fine mentally and physically.

Conway then turned the tables on Peterson by urging her to ask similarly difficult questions to the Biden-Harris administration.

“So I hope you take these same concerns to the people who’ve lied to your face for four years in this administration, all the way to this crushing defeat of a sitting vice president who should have been, who could have been the first female president of color in our nation’s history, but instead had to eat and own all the lies that had been told by this administration,” she said.

Conway also explained the meaning of “alternative facts.”

“Alternative facts was very simple,” she said. “I meant to say ‘alternative information, additional facts.’ It wasn’t George Orwell. It wasn’t a new set of facts.”

Turning her attention specifically to Peterson, she added, “If you want to be judged by two words in your life, it wouldn’t take me much time to find those two words, but I don’t do that — I don’t look at people like that.”

“So here’s what I do. I look at the full measure of people, and if the idea is to try to cut them down from one bad thing they said or one bad day they had, or one article they wrote, then I wish you a much happier life than all that,” she added.

Returning to the concept of “alternative facts,” she stressed that it doesn’t reference “a different set of facts.”

Vivek Saxena
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