Asked to explain Donald Trump’s initial Twitter reaction to the news that NBA star Dwyane Wade’s cousin had been shot and killed in Chicago, his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway refused to defend the sentiment, instead shifting the focus to a tweet Trump posted hours later, offering his condolences. Trump’s campaign deleted his first tweet because Wade’s first name was spelled incorrectly, but the message of the follow-up remained the same: “Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!” More than four hours after he first posted that, he added, “My condolences to Dwyane Wade and his family, on the loss of Nykea Aldridge. They are in my thoughts and prayers.”
When both Face the Nation’s John Dickerson and Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace asked Conway to explain the first tweet, she would only discuss the more somber follow-up. Asked by Dickerson if it is “healthy” for a presidential candidate to see tragedy, whether it is a shooting on the streets of Chicago or a terror attack in Orlando as “validation of what he’s been saying,” Conway suggested that most Americans do not pay attention to Trump’s Twitter feed.
