Hillary Clinton's former communications director Jennifer Palmieri got into a tense shouting match with Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, during a post-election forum on Thursday night at Harvard University.
Palmieri accused Conway and the Trump campaign of legitimizing racism during their election run, the Washington Post reported. During the forum, an event sponsored by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government during which top staffers from both sides sit across from each other, Palmieri also attacked Trump's campaign chief executive, Stephen Bannon, and accused him of spreading racist views when he was in charge of Breitbart News.
"I would rather lose than win the way you guys did," Palmieri said.
Conway insisted that this was not true. After more accusations from the Clinton campaign over racism, Conway asked if they thought she would be associated with a racist campaign.
"Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?" Conway asked. "You're going to look me in the face and tell me that?"
"It did," Palmieri said. "Kellyanne, it did. It did."
Conway countered with how poorly Clinton did with white working class voters, saying she did not connect with average voters. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and chief strategist Joel Benenson mentioned that Clinton won the popular vote. Conway said that Trump won what matters in a presidential election, the electoral college.
Conway also asked the Clinton team if they would move on and accept that they lost the election.
"Hashtag he's your president. How's that?" Conway said. "Will you ever accept the election results? Will you tell your protesters that he's their president, too?"
During the forum, both sides said that they believed that the media was trying to bring them down, with the Clinton campaign also pointed blame at FBI Director James Comey for his role in the probe into Clinton's private email server.
After every presidential election since 1972, all of the primary and general campaigns send senior personnel to this forum to discuss what happened during the race to compile a historical record.