New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in her Sunday column that she doesn’t think Republican presidential front-runner was referring to Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle when he said she had “blood coming out of her wherever.”
Dowd’s column was based on an interview she had with him recently at Trump Tower in Manhattan. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist described Trump as trying to be more diplomatic since his attacks against the star Fox host who moderated the first GOP debate.
I’m trying to tell the freshly minted pol that Megyn Kelly had the right to ask him a question in the debate on how he talks about women, and that she should be tough on the front-runner.
He’s not buying it. In fact, in his stubborn “I win, you lose” way, he has an assistant come over to hand me a printout of Gabriel Sherman’s New York magazine piece headlined “How Roger Ailes Picked Trump, and Fox News’ Audience, Over Megyn Kelly.”
But the 69-year-old is trying hard not to bare his claws at any women right now. His wife, Melania, and his daughter Ivanka have told him they don’t want him to come across as a misogynist when they don’t see him that way.
Buried near the bottom of the piece was a brief defense by the columnist of the infamous remarks Trump made about Kelly in the wake of the debate. Trump said that Kelly had asked him “unfair” questions and looked like she had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
Many took the comments to refer to Kelly’s menstrual cycle. An Aug. 8 article in the Times about Trump’s comments even described it as a matter of fact.
Donald J. Trump’s suggestion that a Fox News journalist had questioned him forcefully at the Republican presidential debate because she was menstruating cost him a speaking slot Saturday night at an influential gathering of conservatives in Atlanta. It also raised new questions about how much longer Republican Party leaders would have to contend with Mr. Trump’s disruptive presence in the primary field.
Some of Trump’s rivals, including former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, also blasted him for using a woman’s period to attack her.
But Dowd got behind Trump in her column, saying she didn’t think he was talking about the menstrual cycle.
How will he deal with Carly Fiorina, who is being hailed as the one to slay Trump after she excoriated him, interpreting his blood “wherever” remark as being about Kelly’s period. (I don’t think he meant it that way.)
“Carly has to be a little bit careful,” he warned.
What if he bursts into Trumpian analysis of how Carly and Hillary look?
“Oh, I would never talk about their looks,” he replied primly. He did, however, imitate how his ears felt (“Eeeeeeeeee”) when he hears Carly’s “staccato bing, bing, bing” voice and delivery.
Read Dowd’s whole column at the Times website.
