#EndorseThis: Trump Campaign Manager Flubs Defense Of His Cuba Scheme

When Kellyanne Conway appeared on The View yesterday, the combative Trump campaign manager parried questions about her candidate’s latest scandal: his company’s reported violations of the embargo on Cuba. While she gamely attempted to minimize the story — which could cost him crucial support in Florida — Conway couldn’t deny what was obviously true: He had “paid money” in a scheme that doesn’t look so good.

For years, Donald Trump has posed as an opponent of the Castro government in Cuba and a supporter of the decades-old embargo on any trade or business investments. Lately he has attacked the Obama administration for renewing diplomatic relations with the island nation and seeking to relax those travel and trade restrictions. But this week, Americans learned from Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald that the casino developer secretly paid tens of thousands of dollars, in hopes of making a major Trump Organization investment in Cuba — and tried to disguise those payments as “charitable donations” to avoid prosecution for violating the embargo. When the embargo wasn’t lifted, of course, Trump pulled back — but his covert Cuba foray is nevertheless a major embarrassment, or worse.

Watch Conway squirm in damage-control mode.