WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rival Republican presidential candidates piled on Donald Trump yesterday for his caustic remarks about a female debate moderator, and the billionaire celebrity candidate backpedalled in an effort to keep his campaign from unraveling.
Trump blasted Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly during a debate in Cleveland on Thursday when she questioned him about insulting comments he had made about women. The backlash to his exchange with Kelly has threatened to knock the wheels off the bandwagon of support that had Trump leading early polls in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2016 election.
Asked about Kelly on a CNN interview on Friday, Trump said: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
Trump was promptly dumped from a keynote speaking role last night in Atlanta at an important gathering of conservative activists put together by the RedState organization. Republican candidates Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry and George Pataki denounced the comments on Twitter or in statements.
RedState chief Erick Erickson said he disinvited Trump because of his remarks about Kelly on CNN.
The Trump campaign issued a statement clarifying that by “her wherever,” Trump meant Kelly’s nose.
“Mr Trump made Megyn Kelly look really bad – she was a mess with her anger and totally caught off guard,” the campaign said. Trump said ‘blood was coming out of her eyes and whatever’ meaning nose, but wanted to move on to more important topics. Only a deviant would think anything else.”
Erickson, who invited Kelly to replace Trump at the conference, said he revoked Trump’s invitation because he did not “want someone on stage who gets a hostile question from a lady and his first inclination is to imply it was hormonal.”
A campaign spokeswoman said yesterday that Trump had fired senior political adviser Roger Stone, the second firing of a senior staffer over the past week. The reason cited was that Stone was using the Trump campaign for his own personal publicity. Stone denied being fired, saying he resigned over the direction of Trump’s campaign.
Trump also took to Twitter yesterday to renounce politically correct attitudes, as he had done at the debate.
“So many ‘politically correct’ fools in our country,” he wrote. “We have to all get back to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense!”
