Kellyanne Conway once made Frank Luntz try on a Speedo so she and her friends could laugh at him

(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

published 14 March 2017

Long before Kellyanne Conway ever became "the greatest spin doctor in modern American history," she was "just fun," in the words of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who met Conway in the 1980s when he was in graduate school at Oxford and she was doing an undergraduate year abroad. But as The Atlantic has learned, Conway and Luntz had an interesting definition of "fun":

One time, [Conway] and a couple of friends took Luntz shopping and made him try on a Speedo so they could laugh at him. "I've been fat for, like, 15 years, but I wasn't always fat," he told me. "Nevertheless, a guy like me should not put on a Speedo." This sounded humiliating and cruel to me, but Luntz insisted it was hilarious. [The Atlantic]

Conway went to law school at George Washington University and accepted an offer to work for a D.C. firm, but reneged when Luntz asked her to join his polling company instead. They traveled the world together, and loved to play pranks, such as pretending they were husband and wife and having a noisy argument in an elevator. After a few years, she left to start her own company. While building her business, Luntz told me, Conway said things about him that hurt his feelings, and the two didn't speak for several years. They have since reconnected. [The Atlantic]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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