Trump Defends Kelly Comment

Leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to hammer Fox News in the Twittersphere over its tough questioning in the debate and he has plenty of supporters if the events over this past weekend are any indication, where he was criticized heavily over a comment he made about Fox's Megyn Kelly.

On Sunday he tweeted: "It amazes me that other networks seem to treat me so much better than Fox News. I brought them the biggest ratings in history, & I get zip."

Trump hammered moderator Megyn Kelly after she grilled him during the debate over disparaging comments he had made about women. He ultimately dismissed the criticism, saying he did not have time to be politically correct, a theme he has echoed over criticisms of his comments on immigrants and as a general response when questioned about his pull-no-punches rhetorical style.

Conservative Web site, RedState, pulled an invitation to Trump from a candidate event over the weekend after he made a comment on CNN that Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever."

RedState editor Erick Erickson wrote on the site explaining the disinvite: "His comment was inappropriate. It is unfortunate to have to disinvite him. But I just don’t want someone on stage who gets a hostile question from a lady and his first inclination is to imply it was hormonal. It just was wrong."

Erickson followed up with a post Sunday about what happened after his disinvite: hate emails, angry phone calls, a denial of service attack to the Web site. He called it a "whirlwind of hate" that maxed out his voice mail and crashed his email, but said he would do it again. "Rescinding my invitation to Donald Trump was the right thing to do."

On CNN's State of the Union, Trump said he did not mean to imply she was menstruating, but was simply referring to her anger. "I said nothing wrong," he said, adding that someone would have to be a "deviant" to think he had meant what was being implied. "Who would say that. I'm a smart person. Only a sick person would even think about it."

Trump said the people were "devastated" that he was not allowed to appear at the RedState event and that he had not wanted to do the event in the first place.

"I have nothing against Megyn Kelly," he said, but added: "I think her questioning was unfair to me....Political correctness in this country is out of control....We need a tougher tone in this country."

Trump suggested Monday (Aug. 10) that perhaps Kelly should be the one apologizing for her line of questioning.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.