Trump Says He Insulted Women for ‘Entertainment’
Editor-in-Chief, ThinkProgress
Donald Trump’s insulting comments about women’s physical appearance have dogged him since the start of his presidential campaign. It famously sparked his feud with Megyn Kelly, who asked him about it at the first Republican presidential debate.
“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals,” Kelly said. “Are you part of the war on women?”
He brushed off the question, saying he didn’t have time to be “politically correct.”
Trump then started to refer to Kelly on Twitter as a “bimbo.”
In the first presidential debate last week, Hillary Clinton reminded viewers that Donald Trump has referred to women as “pigs,” “slobs,” and “dogs.”
Trump defended his comments, particularly as they related to Rosie O’Donnell. “I said very tough things to her and I think everyone would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her,” Trump said.
In an appearance on Wednesday night on KSNV, an NBC affiliate in Las Vegas, a reporter asked Trump, who has two daughters, if he understood the impact of his derogatory comments on young girls struggling with their body image.
Trump said he did, adding that he only insulted women for “entertainment.”
He is trying to position his sexist remarks as part of his former life as a reality TV star seeking to “entertain” the public.
There are a couple of problems with this explanation.
First, why does Trump find insulting women entertaining? Beyond that, his conduct appeared to extend into his private life. A number of former staff members on The Apprentice recently told the AP that his boorish behavior continued when the cameras were not rolling.
Second, his disparaging remarks about women are not something in the past. Just last week, he repeatedly insulted former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. He told a national TV audience that she “gained a tremendous amount of weight” and called her “disgusting.”
Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016
There is no sex tape, but this is how Trump lives his life, now and for many years.
As Erin Gloria Ryan wrote in the Daily Beast, “[t]he story of Donald Trump’s misogyny is so old that if it were a person, Donald Trump probably would not date it.”
