Donald Trump is the candidate fighting to keep women safe from terrorism. That’s how campaign spokesman Stephen Miller defended the GOP frontrunner’s shameful retweet of a sexist meme comparing Heidi Cruz to Melania Trump—stunning a CNN host in the process.
Late Wednesday evening, Trump approvingly retweeted a supporter’s message showing side-by-side images of Heidi and Melania with the caption: “No need to ‘spill the beans,’ the images are worth a thousand words.”
The chauvinistic attack was the latest in a feud that started Tuesday evening when Trump threatened to reveal information about his rival Ted Cruz’s wife in response to an unaffiliated anti-Trump super PAC’s ad mocking Melania Trump for having once posed nude in GQ. For his part, Cruz has refused to actively engage Trump in the race to sexualize each other's wives.
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Miller and the Trump campaign, however, insist on pegging the super PAC ad on Cruz and his donors, using that as an excuse to continue bashing Heidi Cruz.
“There was a vicious, mean-spirited, uncalled-for attack on Mr. Trump’s wife, and it was a personal attack about her image and appearance,” Miller told CNN anchor Kate Bolduan on Thursday. “And so he responded as any normal person would. I don’t really understand what the concern is.”
A clearly baffled Bolduan responded: “Why does Donald Trump want to continue to talk about this? Because as I look at this retweet, as a woman, it’s demeaning to not only Ted Cruz’s wife, it’s demeaning to Melania Trump.”
“I think that you and I are probably just going to have to agree to disagree on this,” Miller insisted. “Not everyone is going to see eye-to-eye on things 100 percent of the time.”
“You endorse the retweet then?” an incredulous Bolduan asked.
“Of course I endorse the decision to retweet it,” Miller replied before ranting about how his candidate is attacked by super PACs for wanting to stop “the powers in Washington, D.C.”
“This retweet has nothing to do with the super PAC,” the CNN host fired back, before politely rebuking her guest: “We will agree on one thing: Put politics out of this, you and I are not going to agree on endorsing something that is demeaning to women, including Donald Trump’s wife.”
And then came Miller’s bizarrely deflective defense: “Women want safe communities, they want better jobs, they want security, and we are going to be the best administration for women’s issues in this country.”
“Women also want to be taken for more than what they look like,” Bolduan shot back. “How about this? Tell your boss to stop perpetuating this conversation and you and I can talk about important things, like maybe how he would handle the threat of terrorism.”
