In an interview scheduled to be broadcast on CBS Sunday Morning, the senior White House adviser compared her remark, which she said was a conflation of “alternative information and additional facts”, to the error last weekend that saw the Oscar for best picture given to La La Land instead of Moonlight.

Her experience under fire from the media, she said, had taught her women must have “bile in your throat” if they are to run for office or be involved in national politics.

Conway has been at the centre of several successive news storms since Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January. First, she said in a TV interview that when Trump press secretary Sean Spicer repeated falsehoods about inauguration crowds and protests across the country, he was presenting “alternative facts”.