During a Tuesday appearance on Fox News, Donald Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson may have previewed how the Republican presidential frontrunner will defend his record of sexist comments if and when they become an issue during the general campaign.
Asked about a new Our Principles PAC ad that simply features women reading sexist Trump quotes — “bimbo… dog… fat pig,” and so forth — Pierson said, “I really don’t think this is going to be a problem. A lot of those statements [are] what Mr. Trump made as a television character, so I don’t think that some of that is going to stick.” (Watch the video here via Mediate.)
So Pierson’s argument is that Trump was just playing a character when he made sexist comments, the implication being that the real Donald doesn’t really believe that stuff.
But the fact is Trump’s record of sexist comments didn’t suddenly end when he descended that escalator and announced his candidacy last June.
For instance, when he was confronted about his history of sexist comments by Fox News host Megyn Kelly during the first Republican presidential debate last August, Trump joked that the only woman he’d call a “slob” or “disgusting animal” is Rosie O’Donnell. That drew laughs from the audience, but during a CNN interview the next night, Trump suggested Kelly asked him “ridiculous questions” because she was on her period. Specifically, he said Kelly had “blood coming out of her whatever.”
In a September Rolling Stone profile, Trump had this to say about Carly Fiorina, the only woman competing for the Republican presidential nomination: “Look at that face!… Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”
Then, in December, Trump, referring to Hillary Clinton’s loss to Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary race, said: “She was going to beat Obama. I don’t know who’d be worse. I don’t know. How does it get worse? She was favored to win and she got schlonged. She lost. She lost.”