Donald Trump on Wednesday defended some of his disparaging remarks about women, saying some were said for the “purpose of entertainment.”
In an interview with the Las Vegas news station KSNV, the Republican presidential nominee was asked if he could understand why parents of daughters might be uncomfortable with his previous comments about women and their physical appearances.
“A lot of that was done for the purpose of entertainment,” Trump said. “There’s nobody that has more respect for women than I do.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign has seized on Trump’s most infamous public statements, using them in a host of TV advertisements aimed at different groups of voters. In one ad, shots of young girls assessing their appearance in front of a mirror are interspersed with clips of Trump insulting various women over the years.
“She’s a slob,” he can be heard saying in the spot. “She ate like a pig.”
Polls have shown Clinton with wide leads among female voters, including white and college-educated women, a group that GOP nominee Mitt Romney won over President Barack Obama four years ago.
In his interview Wednesday, Trump dismissed the notion that he has had to work at dialing back his tone in order to win over some of those voters.
“It’s not a question of trying,” he said. “It’s very easy.”