- Kellyanne Conway says she was "caught off guard" by Trump asking her to be his press secretary.
- In her new book, Conway detailed how Trump offered her the role after he won the 2016 election.
- "Fielding questions from the press corps in the White House Briefing Room held zero appeal to me," she wrote.
Election night in November 2016 was a whirlwind experience for Donald Trump's campaign team, who had worked feverishly to send him to the White House despite most political observers predicting a win by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Throughout the latter part of the 2016 race, Kellyanne Conway — the veteran pollster who managed the former president's 2016 presidential campaign — would become one of the most visible Republican surrogates on the trail.
After the race was called for Trump, the newly-minted president-elect took note of Conway's huge sacrifice to his campaign as the GOP celebrated at the New York Hilton Midtown Manhattan hotel, which she detailed in her memoir, "Here's the Deal."
"Ducking into a quiet corner of the hotel lobby, away from the reporters and victory party stragglers still eager to buttonhole me, I assured Trump that I would handle the round robin of ten TV interviews scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. I would get to the studio inside Trump Tower at 5:30, I said. I'd be talking. He'd be watching. Neither one of us would be sleeping," she wrote.
Amid the excitement, Trump offered Conway one of the most public-facing roles of his administration.
"You have to be press secretary," he said in that moment.
Conway, known for her willingness to speak on behalf of Trump on cable television, was unprepared for such an offer.
"I was caught off guard by that. White House press secretary is one of the most coveted posts under any president. Massive international media exposure. A box seat to history in the making. A fine launch into the next chapter of life. I politely deflected," she wrote.
"We'll discuss it later," she replied to Trump.
He responded: "You'd be so good at that."
But Conway didn't think the role played to her strengths.
"I'd be a terrible press secretary, I thought to myself, gently shaking my head," she wrote.
She continued: "Contrary to his flattering assertion, I did not share Trump's appraisal of my skills in that regard. In my view, I was often on message but also off script, because there was no script. I also didn't want to reflexively slide into the communications (or scheduling) jobs that women often filled, especially given the trust and authority he'd already invested in me in a management and leadership role."
Conway said the thought of continually working in the briefing room wasn't appealing.
"Foxholes weren't my natural habitat. Fielding questions from the press corps in the White House Briefing Room held zero appeal to me, no matter how prestigious the title or large the fame," she wrote.
She added: "As a pollster, I'd spent my entire career asking the questions and listening to the answers — not the other way around. If a CEO or politician wanted to know how a product or a platform would play in Peoria, I was the one who eagerly hopped on a plane to go find out, then connected the dots for them, with the voice of the people, not my own voice, leading the analysis."
Conway would go on to serve in the West Wing for the bulk of Trump's term in office, leaving the press secretary role to Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and Kayleigh McEnany.