Kellyanne Conway calls it inappropriate for Biden campaign to say he’ll be next president: ‘We’re still counting votes’

Former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Thursday criticized Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign saying a victory over President Trump was “imminent,” with Conway arguing “we’re still counting votes.” 

“His campaign manager is out there saying, ‘Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.’ That should not be said, because we are still counting votes,” the former top Trump official said in an interview on Fox News. “And just as Joe Biden is telling people to be patient, I’ve been saying that since election night.”

“If they spent three years investigating this president, impeaching this president, we can certainly wait for three hours, three days, three weeks or three months, however long it takes for every legal and on-time vote to be counted,” Conway added. 

Earlier Thursday, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a conference call with reporters that the campaign’s internal numbers indicated Biden will win a large enough share of the outstanding votes in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona or Nevada to be able to declare victory soon.

“Our data shows Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States,” Dillon said.

One of the campaign’s presentation slides said: “Victory is imminent – we are on the verge of winning 270 electoral votes.”

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum then asked Conway to comment on Trump prematurely declaring victory early Wednesday, even as millions of ballots were still being counted across multiple states. 

Conway attempted to clarify the president’s remarks, saying, “I think what the president was meaning there is that … earlier in the night, he had the race won, people were projecting that some of these states that were supposed to turn blue, like Florida, Ohio, Texas — three states where Michael Bloomberg himself alone spent $100 million to turn those states blue, and they’re still bright red.” 

CONWAY: Biden’s campaign manager called him ‘the next POTUS.’ He shouldn’t be doing that while we’re still counting votes

McCALLUM: POTUS came out on election night and said he had won

CONWAY: He was just saying that he was projected to win pic.twitter.com/1eGFl1jO9o

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2020

In his remarks from the East Room of the White House early Wednesday, Trump asserted that he had won states like Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan despite there being tens of thousands of ballots still outstanding in those states at the time.

“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election,” Trump said. 

“Frankly, we did win this election,” he added. 

As of early Thursday evening, the races in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Alaska remained uncalled by The Associated Press, with Biden carrying 264 electoral votes and Trump holding 214. 

The Trump campaign has since filed lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania over the continued counting of absentee ballots. 

Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens on Thursday dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit in the state, which alleged that Republican officials had been denied access to video of ballot drop boxes.

Stephens said in her ruling that she was not persuaded by the Trump campaign’s argument that their lawsuit merited a halting of the vote count, and she was unconvinced that there’s “a clear legal duty on the part of anyone who is properly before this court to manage this issue.”