Scottie Nell Hughes, a well-known surrogate for Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, said she totally winged it after the scandalous Access Hollywood footage was released to the public. The tape revealed that Trump had told the program’s host Billy Bush that he liked to “grab women by the pussy.”
Hughes, who had a contract with CNN, wasn’t in the cable TV wilderness by her own choice, mind you.
It was Trump’s own campaign. His operatives went silent and wouldn’t return her texts asking for talking points.
This is what Hughes told the Hendersonville Standard, her hometown Tennessee newspaper, in a profile this week.
She had just taken her daughter and niece to “Disney on Ice,” in Nashville when her husband Chris, a Trump delegate and former Sumner County Commissioner called her about a video airing in which Trump talks about explicitly grabbing women. It was Oct. 7.
“He said, ‘this is bad,'” she recalled.
Trump’s campaign wasn’t responding.
“The next thing I know, I’m getting calls from Wolf Blitzer and others saying no one is answering for this, Scottie. Are you going to still support Trump after this?”
She started texting people she knew in the campaign, getting nothing back.
“I wasn’t getting any help whatsoever,” she says, “so I pulled up everything I could find and started crafting a response.”
Hughes’ response involved questioning the timing of the release of the video.
But she refused to defend Trump’s behavior.
“You can’t defend the indefensible and that tape was indefensible,” she told the paper.
Nonetheless, Hughes — who steadfastly defended Trump without any pay from his campaign — is anxiously awaiting a spot in the Trump administration.
She says she’s in talks.