Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti discussed his opposition to Donald Trump's candidacy Monday on MSNBC and got into an exchange with Trump-supporting GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway about his viability in a general election.
MSNBC host Steve Kornacki asked Continetti what was "keeping" him from backing Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
"What's keeping me from supporting him is Donald Trump," Continetti said. "He shouldn't be president, mainly because he just doesn't have the character to be, and so for that reason, I don't see any reason or foreseeable scenario where I'd be voting for him in the fall."
MSNBC host Steve Kornacki pressed him for anything particular that gave Continetti doubts, to which he replied the previous 10 minutes of the program had been spent on the billionaire's demeanor.
"Donald Trump is like a piece of reality TV that detached itself from the networks and implanted itself in the Republican Party," Continetti said. "He's not part of the political process as we understand it. He's a polarizing celebrity who doesn't play by any of the rules of politics, and so you don't want someone like that in the Oval Office to begin with."
Conway, who previously backed Sen. Ted Cruz's (R., Texas) bid, said she was never part of the #NeverTrump movement in explaining her current support.
"For two decades-plus, my job has been to listen to voters," Conway. "I think they've spoken very loudly and clearly here, and I don't know who I am to rebuff the will of over 10 million people who have voted for this man in the primaries ... I look at the two parties right now. You've got Hillary Clinton, for whom the field was completely cleared, and she just can't vanquish Bernie Sanders."
Conway said she had "swallowed hard" on a lot of candidates before like Mitt Romney, who she said took Obamacare off the table as a political issue against the White House in 2012 because of Romneycare being the blueprint for the federal health care law.
"The Republican Party, the voters have spoken," Kornacki said. "This is the guy they've chosen. Doesn't that tell you something about where the Republican Party is?"
"It's not where I am," Continetti said, laughing. "That's fine, and people can for who they want, and the party's going to nominate Donald Trump. But I think there's a large number of people who are conservatives or who have voted for Republican candidates in the past, who just won't be able to bring themselves to vote for Trump in the fall. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to support Hillary."
Continetti also mentioned Romney and said in 2012 that there were policy differences with Republicans about him, but they eventually concluded he had the best chance to defeat President Obama.
"He lost horribly, Matthew," Conway said. "They lost eight of nine swing states. He lost all four states where he has a home."
"You think Trump is going to do any better?" Continetti asked.
"Well, let's see, but that's the point here, isn't it? We know what doesn't work," she said.
Continetti responded that pro-Trump Republicans thought winning above all mattered, but he said it also mattered who wins.
"You just don't want Donald Trump in the Oval Office," he said. "The risks are too great, and also, kind of the damage to American democracy, constitutional norms, God help us, the state of the world, our financial system ... By the way, that's why Trump will lose. Forget about making inroads into the Obama coalition. He'll never do that. The problem is there are a lot of Republican leaners ... white men, white women, who just aren't going to pull the lever for him."