Story highlights
Donald Trump has again brought up Bill Clinton's past infidelity and called Hillary Clinton an "enabler"
He defended those comments on CNN Monday
Donald Trump said Monday he called Hillary Clinton an “enabler” of her husband’s infidelity as “retribution” for her playing the “woman’s card” against him.
“It’s only retribution for what she said. She is playing the woman’s card to the hilt,” Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo in a testy exchange on “New Day.” “She is going, I watched over the weekend, everything is about ‘woman’ and ‘Donald Trump raised his voice.’ And you know it’s all nonsense. You know what? Women understand it better than anybody.”
Trump accused Clinton at a recent campaign stop of attacking the women who accused Bill Clinton of harassing them.
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“She’s been the total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives,” Trump said at the rally. “She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful.”
Hillary Clinton skipped the opportunity to respond to Trump’s comments when she was asked about them during a campaign stop in Stone Ridge, Virginia.
“I have nothing to say about him and how he’s running his campaign,” Clinton said, adding when pressed, “I’ve been clear that a lot of his rhetoric is dangerous.”
Trump initially tried to deflect Cuomo’s question about his rhetoric on Bill Clinton’s affairs, sarcastically calling it “a nice way to start off the interview.”
He then said he has been focused on trade, immigration and veterans issues since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee last week.
Cuomo pressed Trump repeatedly to explain why he was bringing up Bill Clinton’s affairs. Trump initially refused to answer the question. He later argued: “I spoke very little about it compared to other things.”
Trump also contradicted himself on whether Clinton’s affairs were important campaign fodder – he initially said his comments knocking Hillary Clinton were blown out of proportion, but then said the substance of his attack was “a big thing.”
“You took a small amount of the speech and you build it up like it’s the biggest thing in the world. But it is a big thing,” Trump said. “Hey, look, he was the biggest abuser of women, as a politician in the history of our country. He was impeached,” Trump said. “He was impeached and then he lied about it, he said nothing happened with Monica Lewinsky, then he said, ‘Sorry, folks it actually did happen.’ And the guy was impeached for lying.”
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Trump also argued that he will be “better for women” than Hillary Clinton.
“She can’t talk about me because nobody respects women more than Donald Trump,” Trump said. “I will be better for women, by a big factor, than Hillary Clinton, who frankly, I don’t even think will be good to women.”
CNN’s Dan Merica and Gregory Wallace contributed to this report.