CAMBRIDGE, Mass. _ Hillary Clinton's senior campaign strategist did not mince his words Thursday when confronted by top staffers of President-elect Donald Trump: He doesn't have a voter mandate.
"You guys won. That's clear. You won the Electoral College, that's the currency," Clinton strategist Joel Benenson said during a contentious three-hour forum hosted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. "But let's also be honest. Don't act as if you have some popular mandate for your message ... the fact of the matter is that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump."
The confrontation came as tensions between the two campaigns have yet to simmer following an unprecedented, bitter fight for the presidency that ended in Trump's surprise victory earlier this month. The fact that Clinton has won 2.5 million more votes than Trump has galvanized her supporters and led him to claim that it's because of widespread voter fraud.
"Hey guys, we won," said Kellyanne Conway, Trump's third and final campaign manager. "You don't have to respond. I mean, seriously. Why is there no mandate?" she asked as she pointed to congressional seats, governorships and state legislatures lost by Democrats since Barack Obama became president.
Six Clinton staffers faced off against a team of five Trump advisers during the panel, one of several during the two-day Harvard conference, which also included a grilling of CNN President Jeff Zucker on the role cable news played in Trump's rise. But it was the member of the Trump team who had been slated to appear but didn't, campaign chief executive and former Breitbart News head Steve Bannon, whose views on race led to several minutes of heated back-and-forth.
Conway and other Trump aides praised Bannon as a "brilliant tactician."
"If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am glad to have lost," Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri responded. "I am more proud of Hillary Clinton's alt-right speech than any other moment on the campaign because she had the courage to stand up. I would rather lose than win the way you guys did."
Conway fired back, saying, "Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform? You going look me in the face and tell me that?"
