Kellyanne Conway made the comments on PBS in 2013
Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has an interesting solution to sexual violence — it “would not exist,” she said, if women were “physiologically as strong as men.”
Conway, who took the reins of Trump’s campaign earlier this month to become the first woman to ever run a Republican presidential campaign in the general election, made the comments during a PBS panel discussion in 2013. They were dredged up this week by an anti-Trump super PAC, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, and covered by a number of media outlets, including CNN.
The panel in question was tackling the topic of gender equality in the military; CNN reports that Conway — then a Republican pollster, according to PBS’ credits — brought up the subject of rape unprompted.
“If we were physiologically — not mentally, emotionally, professionally — equal to men, if we were physiologically as strong as men, rape would not exist,” Conway said. “You would be able to defend yourself and fight him off.”
You can watch the entirety of the conversation at PBS.