- Trump slammed Kellyanne Conway in May after her book came out.
- Two months later he said before an audience in DC, "I love Kellyanne!"
- The former White House counselor was sitting in the audience.
Former President Donald Trump doesn't appear to be holding a grudge against Kellyanne Conway after tearing into her on social media two months ago.
"I love Kellyanne!" Trump said Tuesday about his former White House counselor, speaking at the America First Policy Institute Summit in Washington, DC.
"Right Kellyanne? I see my Kellyanne. I love Kellyanne," Trump said to applause and appearing to point at Conway, who he said was sitting in the room.
Just two months ago, Trump slammed Conway for writing in her book "Here's the Deal" that she told Trump he lost the 2020 presidential election.
"Kellyanne Conway never told me that she thought we lost the election," Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth social. "If she had I wouldn't have dealt with her any longer — she would have been wrong — could go back to her crazy husband."
But several times in his speech Tuesday he stopped to say Conway's name, including at one point when he said he thought Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California had a head "shaped like a watermelon" and called him "quite an unattractive man."
"Now see they'll get me in trouble for that, Kellyanne," Trump said.
Trump continues to falsely say he won the 2020 election and has for more than a year hinted that he will seek the White House again in 2024. Tuesday's speech was no exception. He predicted a "Republican president will take back the White House in 2024."
Trump also said that if he stayed silent it would be "a much simpler life" but "that's not what I'll do."
"There's an expression: The best day of your life is the day before you run for president. Did you ever hear that expression? I laughed at it and I said, 'That may be true actually, right, Kelly?'" he said, appearing to shorten Conway's name.
Conway told Insider in an interview in May that she thought Trump would run for president again in 2024.
Tuesday's speech was the first time that Trump returned to the nation's capital since he left office. Much of his remarks lamented cities he called a "cesspool of crime" and proposed public safety policy positions.
But the speech also devolved into complaints about Democrats' investigations into whether his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to rig the election, railings against transgender athletes, and boasts about the strength of the economy under his presidency.
In her book, Conway praised Trump throughout, often casting the pitfalls of his presidency as a failure of those around him.
"The team failed on November 3, and they failed again afterward," she wrote. "By not confronting their candidate with the grim reality of his situation, that the proof had not surfaced to support the claims, they denied him the evidence he sought and the respect he was due."
Conway, the first woman in American history to successfully run a presidential campaign in 2016, repeatedly tore into Brad Parscale, Trump's original 2020 campaign manager; Jared Kushner, and Steve Bannon.
Conway repeatedly says in her book that Trump had her back. Her husband, George Conway, a conservative lawyer turned Trump critic, she wrote, was the one forcing her to choose between her marriage and her career.
"I had two men in my life," Conway wrote. "One was my husband. One was my boss, who happened to be president of the United States. One of those men was defending me. And it wasn't George Conway. It was Donald Trump."
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