Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, slammed Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) for “interrupting a female moderator” at the vice presidential debate in Farmville, Virginia on Tuesday evening.
Much of the criticism for Kaine involved his repeated interruptions of his Republican rival, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. (The Republican National Committee counted 57 interruptions.)
But Conway, speaking to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in the spin room after the debate, highlighted Kaine’s interruptions of CBS News’ Elaine Quijano.
Kelly was skeptical, but Conway defended her point, noting that she was just holding Kaine to the Clinton campaign’s own standard:
Conway: There he was, interrupting a female moderator. We lost track of the times. We just stopped writing it down. He was interrupting —
Kelly: You can interrupt a female moderator, same as a male.
Conway: Well, no. It’s the Clinton campaign who loves to throw around words like “sexism” and “unhinged.” They’ve got to be regretting those words on a night like tonight, when Tim Kaine looked like both.
Later in the interview, Kelly asked Conway about Trump’s low approval ratings with women in some polls. Conway reiterated her view that Kaine had damaged himself, and the Clinton campaign: “You think that Tim Kaine’s performance tonight is going to sit well with women?”
She added: “I think you’re going to hear from all the pundits tonight, “these vice-presidential debates don’t really matter, they won’t move the polls,’ because they know how lopsided a victory it was for Mike Pence.”
Update: Later, Conway reiterated the point in an interview with Sean Hannity, noting that if Donald Trump or Mike Pence had treated a female moderator the way Tim Kaine had, it would have been a scandal.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.