Kellyanne Conway says Trump lost the 2020 election, but 'supplicant after sycophant after showman' tried to convince him otherwise: book

One of President Donald Trump's most loyal advisors wrote in a new tell-all memoir that he lost the 2020 election.

Kellyanne Conway, former senior advisor to the president and the last of his 2016 campaign managers, makes her clearest assertion yet in her new book, "Here's the Deal," which came out on Tuesday.

"Despite the mountains of money Trump had raised, his team simply failed to get the job done. A job that was doable and had a clear path, if followed," Conway wrote of the 2020 election. "Rather than accepting responsibility for the loss, they played along and lent full-throated encouragement (privately, not on TV) when Trump kept insisting he won."

Conway's concession is notable, as the former president still maintains he was victorious and the election was stolen from him, despite no evidence to support the claim. Several far-right Republican candidates running in 2022 primaries continue to reiterate Trump's false claims to voters, as they appeal to the party's conservative base. Trump also used Twitter and his bully pulpit to insist that he'd actually won the election, culminating in a violent attempt by his supporters to stop Congress from certifying the election results on January 6, 2021.

Conway's book covers the frenetic days surrounding the 2020 presidential election when the Trump campaign and its allies frantically attempted to deny the legitimate election of Joe Biden. A team of lawyers representing Trump spent weeks filing lawsuits to challenge the vote in states Biden won, all of which failed.

Conway also excoriated "supplicant after sycophant after showman" who "genuflected in front of the Resolute Desk and promised the president goods they could not deliver."

"By not confronting the candidate with the grim reality of his situation, that the proof had not surfaced to support the claims, they denied him the evidence he sought and the respect he was due," she wrote.

In the book, Conway also depicted herself as a lone voice of reason in a staff eager to please the president.

"I may have been the first person Donald Trump trusted in his inner circle who told him that he had come up short this time," she wrote.

The book contains Conway's most explicit acknowledgement yet of Trump's loss, though in December 2020 she told The 19th, "If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail."

"We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do," Conway told the news outlet at the time.

Despite her criticism of the way Trump and his staff handled the 2020 election, Conway remains a close ally of Trump's.

Kellyanne Conway Says in New Book That Trump Lost the 2020 Election (businessinsider.com)