Donald Trump may have dug himself another hole last night. While complaining that Fox News’ Megyn Kelly didn’t treat him fairly during questioning at the first Republican presidential debate, he added to his laundry list of sexist comments about women by suggesting that Kelly was on her period on Thursday night. That comment cost him a spot at a major conservative gathering on Saturday night.
On last night’s edition of “CNN Tonight,” host Don Lemon asked Trump about his spat with Kelly. Trump replied that he didn’t have a lot of respect for Kelly as a journalist. He called her “highly overrated,” and called her questions “ridiculous.” He then said something that is so outrageous that it has to be reproduced in full to be believed.
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her whatever. In my opinion, she was off-base.”
Watch the interview here.
Lemon pressed Trump for sharing a tweet that called Kelly a “bimbo,” and also called out senior staffer Michael Cohen for retweeting a suggestion that Trump’s followers can “gut” Kelly. But for whatever reason, Lemon didn’t call out Trump for essentially saying that Kelly didn’t treat him fairly because she was on her period. That was several times more sexist than the tweets Lemon did point out.
Well, it didn’t take long for those comments to come back to haunt Trump. Just under two hours after Trump made those comments, RedState’s Erick Erickson announced that Trump would not be attending Saturday night’s RedState Gathering in Atlanta. Erickson said that while he’d tried to give Trump “a lot of latitude” because he isn’t a traditional politician, “there are real lines of decency a person running for President should not cross.” In typical style, Trump’s campaign replied that Erickson’s snub of their boss was “another example of weakness through being politically correct.” Uh huh. So expecting that you treat women with some degree of respect is a sign of “weakness?”
Trump was due to give the keynote speech at the RedState Gathering, which was due to feature most of the major GOP presidential hopefuls. But in an obvious swipe at Trump, Erickson gave that slot to Kelly.
Trump later tweeted that he wasn’t referring to Kelly’s period at all.
Re Megyn Kelly quote: “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” (NOSE). Just got on w/thought
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 8, 2015
But considering that his campaign team thinks losing the RedState Gathering gig was a sign of weakness, you’ll have to pardon me if I don’t believe him.
Episodes like this are why I find it hard to celebrate Trump’s rise in the polls. If he gets the Republican nomination, in all likelihood he’d get destroyed in the general election. And if he makes good on his threat to make a third-party run if the GOP establishment doesn’t treat him fairly, it will essentially hand the Democrats the White House on a plate. But what does it say about the state of our politics that a guy who finds it acceptable to plaster a private cell phone number on social media and make ugly, misogynistic comments about women can even talk about running for president? I don’t know, but it can’t be good.
